User Albums Journey
Exploring beyond the book, one album at a time
View 1001 Albums Summary336
Albums Rated
3.5
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Rating Distribution
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Taste Profile
1960
Favorite Decade
Jazz
Favorite Genre
other
Top Origin
Cheerleader
Rater Style ?
93
5-Star Albums
40
1-Star Albums
Breakdown
By Genre
Top Styles
By Decade
By Origin
Albums
You Love More Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
TEKKNO
Electric Callboy
|
5 | 2.46 | +2.54 |
|
Alexisonfire
Alexisonfire
|
5 | 2.46 | +2.54 |
|
Peasant
Richard Dawson
|
5 | 2.59 | +2.41 |
|
Choirs Of The Eye
Kayo Dot
|
5 | 2.63 | +2.37 |
|
Ungodly Hour
Chloe x Halle
|
5 | 2.63 | +2.37 |
|
Bloody Kisses
Type O Negative
|
5 | 2.7 | +2.3 |
|
L'autre...
Mylène Farmer
|
5 | 2.71 | +2.29 |
|
This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!
Pop Will Eat Itself
|
5 | 2.74 | +2.26 |
|
Savage Sinusoid
Igorrr
|
5 | 2.76 | +2.24 |
|
Discosis
Bran Van 3000
|
5 | 2.76 | +2.24 |
You Love Less Than Most
| Album | You | Global | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Alive 2007
Daft Punk
|
1 | 3.69 | -2.69 |
|
Carrie & Lowell
Sufjan Stevens
|
1 | 3.52 | -2.52 |
|
Silent Alarm
Bloc Party
|
1 | 3.45 | -2.45 |
|
Lateralus
TOOL
|
1 | 3.37 | -2.37 |
|
Ænima
TOOL
|
1 | 3.35 | -2.35 |
|
Boxer
The National
|
1 | 3.33 | -2.33 |
|
Spirit of Eden
Talk Talk
|
1 | 3.29 | -2.29 |
|
The Lion's Roar
First Aid Kit
|
1 | 3.28 | -2.28 |
|
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
Big Thief
|
1 | 3.25 | -2.25 |
|
Pulse
Pink Floyd
|
1 | 3.25 | -2.25 |
Artists
Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| Vampire Weekend | 2 | 5 |
Least Favorites
| Artist | Albums | Average |
|---|---|---|
| TOOL | 3 | 1 |
| Sufjan Stevens | 2 | 1.5 |
Controversial
| Artist | Ratings |
|---|---|
| The Mountain Goats | 4, 1 |
| Jimmy Eat World | 2, 5 |
| Daft Punk | 1, 4 |
5-Star Albums (93)
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Popular Reviews
Chucklehead · 5 likes
5/5
This was absolutely the tits. Surprised at the things it did, and it did them well. Good news.
Electric Callboy · 5 likes
5/5
This is actually a lot of fun. Sillu exuberance, wrapped up like the bastard child of Scooter and Rammstein.
Don't take it too seriously, it's not meant to be world-changing.
Bran Van 3000 · 4 likes
5/5
I submitted this, and I finally get to review it! Hooray!
Like everyone else in the 1990s, BV3k came to my attention courtesy of the Rolling Rock advert (featuring Drinkin' in La) and on the back of that, I was persuaded to buy Glee. Glee wasn't like anything I'd heard before, and it was a very strong contender for suggestion here. What Glee isn't, though, is accessible. James Di Salvio had put it together by contacting mates in the Quebec music scene, asking them for music and then throwing it all at the wall. Somehow something brilliant came out of it, but I can fully see why many people would be turned off by it.
Discosis is more accessible, but I can still see why the variety and pace of it would put people off. Di Salvio used pretty much the exact same approach as he had for Glee, though instead of approaching his mates from Montreal, he went through his record collection - getting work from Curtis Mayfield, Big Daddy Kane, Youssou N'dour, Eek-a-mouse and Jean Leloup to play with. That's astonishing, and the pedigree of the performers is testament to how well Glee did with people who were in the know.
Discosis opens incredibly strong - as other reviews have commented - with Curtis Mayfield's previously unreleased vocals forming the basis of a soul-lifting, foot-tapping journey, developing over it's 5¾ minute run into a fast-paced, Latinesque that feeds itself in perfectly to an all-over-the-place album.
The rest of the album may not quite reach the heights, but almost everything just fits together nicely. It makes me happy in ways that few other albums do. Despite this, I agree they should have ended it with Love Cliche, as Rock Star easily whimpers out as the weakest track on the album by a country mile.
I didn't know, when I submitted this (probably nearly a year ago) that there would be quite so many Quebecois acts represented in the user suggestions, however I don't have much in the way of regrets submitting this. If pressed again now I might have suggest Cymande's eponymous first album, but if I'm honest with myself, Discosis has the most play time of any album I've ever bought. So I'm sorry if you don't enjoy your experience with Bv3k. I think it's a grower, maybe give it another go, knowing it won't let you sit still and settle into a genre for very long. Set aside your expectations, be curious about where Di Salvio takes you and have fun. Don't worry about how you get there.
Type O Negative · 4 likes
5/5
Oh yes! I was so tempted to suggest something by Type O Negative myself.
When reviewing the Sisters of Mercy for the main list, I suggested that they "were kind of like Type O Negative, without the fun". It is very important to remember that Type O are a band that's all about fun. Yes, goth metal is an unlikely vehicle for it, but these guys, and most everyone I know who like them, are having an absolute blast.
Type O are goth camp. The dials are turned up to 11 and and we're having the time of our lives. Also in my Floodland review, I mentioned the impossibly beautiful girls in corsets and lace writhing around me. Type O pastiches this, and I'm totally here for it.
While there is clearly a 2020s reinvigoration of goth, thanks in part, let's be fair, to Jenna Ortega, I think we should go further. Pass me the eyeliner, get me in some leather trousers and a frilly shirt and let the impossibly beautiful girls in corsets and lace writhe around me.
The Mountain Goats · 3 likes
4/5
Sounds like the kind of music you try and ignore when you accidentally turn out to an open mic night at a pub.
You just wanted a jaunt out, good chat, few beers, maybe talk to some people you've never met before... and then some eejit with an acoustic guitar starts strumming away and singing, which ruins your plans. But it turns out OK because actually he's got some talent and hey, he finishes eventually.
The barman is wearing a hand-plaited friendship bracelet and he prefers making coffee to pulling pints.
I think the best thing about The Mountain Goats is that I always confuse them with an album called The Mountain Dogs by Stealing Sheep.
The thing I like least about this is the deliberately janky recording.
1-Star Albums (40)
All Ratings
Nuyorican Soul
5/5
This is really good. One of those collections that I'm sure I've been aware of in the past, but never really arrived into my conscious mind as something.
There's quite a lot of quite a lot in here - and it is very clearly contemporary to the likes of Thievery Corporation and Nightmares on Wax. It reminds me a bit of Mr Scruff's selections in places, and the four-to-the-floor disco revival of late 90s Moloko in others. Naturally, anyone who had this playing in their bars in the late 90s was aiming for a cosmopolitan, too-cool-for-school Tribeca warehouse kind of feel. And I get that - I totally do.
It's not something I'd want to sit down and actively listen to for over 2 hours really. It's absolutely, 100% the sort of thing that should be playing in the background while Martinis are mixed for you. You need to be chatting up people with way better fashion sense but way less money than you.
You'd have looked into the production of this album, and you'll have interesting facts prepped about it - like did you know that Jazzy Jeff was involved? Yes, that dude that Uncle Phil kept throwing out in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. You absolutely won't have pulled, but at least you'd be charitably waved at by the immaculately dishevelled young thing you were trying it on with next time you went to that warehouse bar.
You see - this is the difference between the 90s and the 00s. This music is funky, relaxed, effortlessly cool and makes you think that you can do everything. Even get a number from someone dressing for the cover of Vogue from charity shop finds and dumpster dives.
The equivalent to this in the 00s was angry, aggressive, cynical and overconfident to the point of arrogance. You definitely would get that number in the 00s, but you'd also have woken up with them, covered in kebab and chlamydia. And that's the difference.
In the 90s, it was OK to be optimistic, because there just wasn't anything left to worry you.
In the 20s there are hints of optimism coming back through in music, but it is (rightfully) imbued with a sense of responsibility.
This is absolutely a record of its time. After The End of History but before Dubya. It represents a world that genuinely didn't think it had anything to worry about, and I like that.
Sure, I appreciate the maturity and the compassion of 20s music, and I'm glad that we're less naive about who we have around us. We can reflect on the sheer fucking hubris of the 90s with a degree of guilty shame. But holy god damn I miss how good it felt to be this amount of cool.
TOOL
1/5
One hour seventeen minutes of heavy guitars and terribly fatiguing bass?
Well, this is probably gonna be a struggle.
So far I'm up to H. and I'm bored witless.
The best track on here is "Intermission". It's the only one that isn't relentlessly doomy- oh so edgelordy. Only heavily strummed bass guitars can describe my anguish. I bet he sings with his eyes closed.
Yeah, I'm really glad that people like this, but it isn't for me
The Mountain Goats
4/5
Sounds like the kind of music you try and ignore when you accidentally turn out to an open mic night at a pub.
You just wanted a jaunt out, good chat, few beers, maybe talk to some people you've never met before... and then some eejit with an acoustic guitar starts strumming away and singing, which ruins your plans. But it turns out OK because actually he's got some talent and hey, he finishes eventually.
The barman is wearing a hand-plaited friendship bracelet and he prefers making coffee to pulling pints.
I think the best thing about The Mountain Goats is that I always confuse them with an album called The Mountain Dogs by Stealing Sheep.
The thing I like least about this is the deliberately janky recording.
Biffy Clyro
3/5
Cliffy Biro.
The Avett Brothers
5/5
I've actually really enjoyed this. Surprised to have, but there's definitely something about this that appeals. Glad I listened.
The Jesus Lizard
4/5
An enjoyable antidote to grunge - by far and away less self-destructive, and definitely a fresh take at the time.
Ani DiFranco
5/5
This is great, why didn't I listen to this in the 90s? Or any of the 3 subsequent decades?
Shameless is The Tits.
Jimmy Buffett
2/5
Rootin' tootin' country rock dreck.
He's got a nice (if you like that sort of thing) voice and I've not immediately wanted to turn it off, which is pretty high praise for country, but it's still country. Bleh.
The Burning Hell
3/5
I guess this is what you'd call nerd rock?
Definitely strikes me as the sort of thing that people who like TMBT or Jonathan Coulter would be into.
I didn't mind it, but would be in no hurry to listen again.
Ty Segall
4/5
Delightfully bonkers, although that gets tired after a while, so could do with being a bit shorter.
Fontaines D.C.
4/5
So many hints of their antecedents!
The vocal delivery sounds a bit like I, Ludicrous. The music has nods towards New Order.
Like many other reviewers have opined, this is a grower. Not something I'd have stuck with without the framework of this project, and I'm quite glad that I did towards the end of The Lotts. Liberty Belle is a hoot.
INXS
4/5
One of the genuine surprises of the original list was the absence of INXS. I'm looking forward to listening to it.
So yeah, it's a good album. Not a great album, but a good album with some great songs on it.
It starts and ends wrapped around Need You Tonight, the obvious stand-out, with a couple of highlights.
So slide over here. And give me a moment.
Scraping Foetus off the Wheel
4/5
Not as terrible as the edgelordy name would suggest.
The Sound
4/5
The Sound From The Lion's Mouth - Is it a roar?
It'll be a roar, won't it?
Well no. What it is us surprisingly unknown early 80s that fits right in with its contemporary stuff, but apparently never got anywhere.
Bizarre!
I'm glad to have heard it, but it just makes me wonder why nobody else did either.
MF DOOM
4/5
I can see what the end goal is here, I just think it has been done better by other people.
That being said, it's a fairly bold attempt.
Gotcha!
3/5
Gotcha.
Moderately surprised at how early this was - would easily have expected it to be a self-produced effort from the late 2000s.
Self produced because the production values are utterly garbage. Half the time it sounded like live album played in a pub. The other, well - some of it is funky and highly listenable. On the other hand, there is also "any better love" and "money", which are hot effluvia.
I view this as an interesting distraction from a country that has otherwise only given us gabber and 2 Unlimited.
Cluster
5/5
Hypnotic beats with a synthy edge. Very easy to get lot in, and seldom outstays its welcome.
Salif Keita
4/5
Well, this sure is Malian music.
It's pretty good too.
Arthur Russell
1/5
My initial reaction to this was "What on earth is this tosh?"
It's performance art for the sake of performance art - I see little merit in it, apart from being able to stroke your beard contemplatively at the impressive juxtaposition of this, to that, and the counter-play of the meta-dichotomous plurality of the tripe and the bilge working harmoniously with the pretentiousness and the codswallop.
This occupies exactly the same space as Throbbing Gristle.
My final reaction to it is "should I listen to it again? Am I missing something?" - a question that can easily be answered.
Earth, Wind & Fire
5/5
Absolutely delightful.
While I'm not as keen on the slower numbers, it's still a great album from the dying days of disco.
Sublime
5/5
Oh man, I love this album. I've loved it for - omfg - nearly 30 years.
Sure, the lyrics are horrifying and most of the music is flagrantly stolen from other artists, but it sure is a great vibe that this puts out.
Courteeners
2/5
You could hotswap with with any of their contemporaries and not be any the wiser.
Is it The Coral? Is it Razorlight?
Could easily be.
It's not terrible, it's just nothing exceptional from a period of music that had completely lost its way.
Vulfpeck
2/5
Well, these guys are talented.
But that is no excuse for a live album.
Nobody needs to hear the audience.
The music is funky, and I'm glad I've been introduced to Vulfpeck. I look forward to listening to their studio-produced stuff that doesn't have the chore of the crowd noises or the audience interaction.
A lot of these tracks sound like the opening themes to early 90s sitcoms. You can easily imagine (despite the audience noises) this playing over montage shots of Greg Evigan and Paul Reiser.
Marillion
3/5
Well, this sure sounds like music for middle-aged white guys.
As with many offerings from prog, it is overwrought, hugely overindulgent and also incredibly long.
Sure, the music is pretty decent (and abundant) and the production is pretty good - but for crying out loud, this 100 minutes of prog, and that's more than anyone needs.
3 stars only because I fit exactly into the target demographic.
The Cure
5/5
Wow, three votes so far, at the time of writing. Must have only been suggested a couple of days ago, tops. Anyway.
Here's vote four, review three.
After the first track I was prepared to go on rant about how The Cure shouldn't be shoegaze. Sure, a load of shoegaze massives would argue that The Cure was one of their primary inspirations, but The Cure are not shoegaze in the same way that The Beatles are not britpop.
Blimey though, this is a really shoegazey record.
Fortunately, it is also The Cure.
The thing about The Cure is that they are excellent. Robert Smith can conjure feelings out the wahooey, and that's exactly what this record does. Conjures feelings.
I'm not as old as Smith - he's got over two decades on me - but the feelings this music inspires - ageing, slowing down, loss, reflection, a curious lack of anger, despite protests of injustice and unfairness - are every bit as powerful to middle-aged me as the mournful optimism and hope of Pictures of You were to me in my teens and twenties.
I mean, even now as a cynical and jaded curmudgeon in his mid forties, Pictures of You can cut through the shield of my bitter and calloused shell.
We will have to leave this album to brew for thirty or so years to see if anything from it will hit as hard. On just one listen, I suspect probably not, but it's not really fair to ask anyone - even Robert Smith - to try and equal Robert Smith.
It is, to be sure, an absolutely excellent album and I suspect that I'll listen to it a lot...but I agree it is maybe a bit young still to be in the pantheon. Mind you, Kiwanuka is also very young and that definitely needs to be on the list, so I'm willing to allow it. For the moment.
They Might Be Giants
4/5
OK, so TMBG are musical nerds who make music for nerds who are not musical.
I'm not saying that the Venn diagram of people who listen to TMBG and people who play tabletop games is a perfect circle, but if you were to add TMBG listeners to an n-dimensional Venn diagram that includes tabletop gamers, folk who solve maths problems for fun, people who care about the numbers in the model of a graphics card, anyone who has been to a comicon or anyone above the age of 19 who cares what a pokemon is, you'd have very little negative space in the TMBG portion.
Now, bear in mind that I've just talked about something being n-dimensional... I get the nerd bit! But TMBG are just a bit too... too for me. There's a few tracks here and there (Cloisonne) that I really quite enjoy, but added up, it's just too much twee for me. Maybe it's an overstimming of the nerd bit?
TMBG do what they do very well, and I can't fault them for keeping nerds entertained for 40+ years, and yeah, there probably should be a TMBG album on the list, so why not this one? You probably should listen to one of theirs because, why not?
Chappell Roan
5/5
This is the second time I've listened to this album in a fortnight - and it's actually pretty good. Very poppy, although I do question whether this album will have staying power.
It's just a shame that so many people are latching on to it being new. The fact that we've regressed to the point that campy excess is considered to be innovative really is heartbreaking. I guess it's a fight we have to have again and again and again.
Jóhann Jóhannsson
5/5
I'd say this is absolutely, 100% unique in the list - it's the only real dance (using the term lightly) with classical I've come across so far and although I've still got 150 or so user-submitted albums to go, I get the feeling I won't be hearing another like this.
Definitely worth including, and I thank the person who suggested it for thinking a bit different when it comes to the type of music expected of the list.
The Hold Steady
2/5
Music for the iPod generation.
I found the lyrics to be cynical, often veering towards misogyny. The mid 2000s was a desolate wasteland for music, and while this isn't the aggressively bad worst of it, it's not something I would ever actively choose to put into my earballs.
I say at the top of this review that it's music for the ipod generation, because it sounds like it has been mastered to listen to on cheap-end earbuds, which was the style at the time.
The Lumineers
3/5
This reminds me a lot of David Gray.
Stars
5/5
This is actually pretty decent. Way more experimental that it appears at first.
The Marcus King Band
3/5
This seems like perfectly average blues from a 20-year old lad. Sure, it's competent enough, but strays into country a bit too often. I guess he's young and he might improve with age.
Thee Oh Sees
2/5
Oh boy, am I looking forward to a live album from a band I've never heard of, with unpleasant album art.
OK. So the album isn't that bad. What it absolutely is though, is live. Which means that while the band might well have been reacting to and vibing with the audience for the full 15 minutes and 55 seconds of "Contraption" - or even the miserably over-long at half the length "Sticky Hulks", we sat in the comfort of our own homes are growing increasingly irritated at the continuation of this repetitive mess.
Get these guys into a studio, give them a decent producer and I'll come back to them. Until then, wipe the slobber off your chin, guys, I'm not going to go to one of your gigs and I don't want to listen to a recording of one.
Garbage
5/5
It's tempting to say that this record is only 5 or 10 years old - but no, it's coming up to thirty years since this hit the shops, and I remember it well.
Well. I remember Shirley Manson.
"Garbage" (by Garbage) is an album that I listened to a fair bit back in the 90s, and, it turns out, I listened to Version 2.0 a lot more, because putting this on for the first time in years was like slipping into a warm friend.
The first track is nothing special. Manson's voice sounds almost like it's coming from underwater, with pretty heavy vocoder effects. Things get much better, though. The vocals definitely become cleaner and clearer, and that's brilliant.. Because when they do, especially during "Hammering in my head", those vocals are dirty, urgent and delicious.
The second half of the album is as tellingly placed in the late 90s as any music could be. I grew up with it, and going back to it is great.
This is actually a much better album than Garbage, so I'm happy with it being suggested.
Kayo Dot
5/5
I wasn't at all sure what to expect but I certainly didn't expect something from 2003, the nadir of music, to be this good.
John Zorn, behind one of the worst-rated albums on the original list, is credited on this, and I can see why some folk might find his stuff objectionable, I really enjoyed Spy vs Spy so I was more than prepared to find out what was going on with this.
It's a delight!
One of the main problems I have with metal is that it so often outstays it's welcome. This album is brilliantly designed to limit your exposure to it, so it actually has an impact without rapidly descending into the fatigue that so plagues the genre. This is jazzy, ambient - in parts contemplative, in others outrageous. I liked it a lot, thanks for the recommendation!
Koritni
3/5
Well, this isn't a bad album, but it is also a thoroughly unoriginal album that contributes nothing but a fun 40-ish minutes to your life.
Yes, the album is 51 minutes long. It gets tired after 40 though.
Hikaru Utada
4/5
'kin weeb.
I genuinely love the fact that the user recommendations are straying further away from the eleventy million Bowie albums, identical-sounding British NME belle-du-jour acts of the 2000s and albums by Bob Dylan that would more usually be included in lists of things banned by UN convention as being cruel and a violation of fundamental human rights. This jpop offering is just that - poppy nonsense.
The Wikipedia entry for it reads like a Patrick Bateman review. It is trashy pop and it's a diversion, purely disposable. And that's OK.
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
5/5
A collection of songs you know from other places - but executed brilliantly by an acknowledged master. What isn't there to like?
Nik Kershaw
4/5
I'm quite surprised at how many of these seem vaguely familiar, and given that most of this stuff hasn't been in the public consciousness since about 1985, that's quite astonishing.
I can't claim that anything from this album will enter my regular rotation, but I did quite enjoy Shame on You's vocal, er... sound, I guess. I wonder what influence (if any) Mr Kershaw had on Camille - it's a similar kind of beatboxy thing to what she does, although I'm genuinely not sure if beatboxing is the right term for it.
Anyway - yeah, better than I feared and actually quite a fun bit of otherwise disregarded 80s in a virtually untouched time capsule.
Charli xcx
3/5
I have no really strong views on this, either way. I mean, asides from shifting the definition of "brat" a lot closer to "basic bitch", this is broadly a disposable pop album that'll disappear from consciousness as quickly as, say, P!nk's "the truth about love".
The vocal effects are distracting to the point of mild annoyance, but the basic poppiness of the album means that it is only mild.
I guess I'm absolutely not the target demographic for this. Picture Lucille Bluth saying "Good for her!" and you're probably about where I am on this.
The War On Drugs
3/5
They don't 'alf sound like they want to be Dire Straits.
Type O Negative
5/5
Oh yes! I was so tempted to suggest something by Type O Negative myself.
When reviewing the Sisters of Mercy for the main list, I suggested that they "were kind of like Type O Negative, without the fun". It is very important to remember that Type O are a band that's all about fun. Yes, goth metal is an unlikely vehicle for it, but these guys, and most everyone I know who like them, are having an absolute blast.
Type O are goth camp. The dials are turned up to 11 and and we're having the time of our lives. Also in my Floodland review, I mentioned the impossibly beautiful girls in corsets and lace writhing around me. Type O pastiches this, and I'm totally here for it.
While there is clearly a 2020s reinvigoration of goth, thanks in part, let's be fair, to Jenna Ortega, I think we should go further. Pass me the eyeliner, get me in some leather trousers and a frilly shirt and let the impossibly beautiful girls in corsets and lace writhe around me.
Anaïs Mitchell
4/5
This is going to be a tough review. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this, never having heard of it, or her.
When it started up, I was genuinely pretty intrigued. And then she started singing, and oh my very god, I hate her vocal style. Justin Vernon is grand - and Greg Brown is better - but when the primary artist has a voice that drives you nuts, it makes it very hard to work through.
It really is a shame, because in almost every other respect, I actually really quite like this. I say "almost every" because there's that fingernails-on-a-blackboard "bwap-bwap-bwooow!" of country guitars every so often too.
God. I really can't express how much I hate her vocal affectations. In "Flowers", 'red' becomes 'Ray-ee-aye-eh-hed' - utterly piss-boiling, especially as it's clear she's actually got a voice in her. If it wasn't for her indie-girl, cursive singing nonsense, I think I'd actually say this was one of the better entries on the list - easily top 100 - but I'm afraid I really am gonna have a ding a star for it.
Mary Chapin Carpenter
1/5
Look, I'm sure this is great and that, but it's just too country, and country is universally rubbish.
Wussy
3/5
I was about to say that while I listened to this just yesterday, I have absolutely zero memory of it, but trying really hard to pluck up some memory, there actually are some flashes of recollection.
The main one that comes up in amateurishness. The vocals especially had me wondering if it was a live gig, because surely no recording engineer or producer would have said "Yep, that's it, that is perfect!" and put them into the final mix?
That being said, I liked the varied nature of it, and nothing really offended me. Just kinda feels like the sort of album that has a personal connection to the suggestor, rather than something that's going to change the world for anyone. Who knows, they might have excellent stage presence that doesn't really translate into a produced album.
Either way - middle of the road for me.
Hombres G
4/5
Fun, disposable pop in a language I don't understand. Fair enough!
Dave Matthews Band
2/5
Sure, was there in the late 90s when this was apparently popular - but in a different country - but despite this, I just don't get it.
Sure, they're mostly inoffensive, occasionally repetitive, but they fail to gripper me in a way that has me questioning the gripperedness of the people who love 'em.
Sure, you do you I guess. Everyone is entitled to their opinion - I just can't help but feel like I'm looking in from outside at a cult.
Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera
4/5
Early - and very definitely influential, by the sounds of it. Several times I found myself thinking "Whoa, that's where ... must have gotten it from!"
Decent.
Tame Impala
4/5
Nice. First time I've listened to a whole album through by Tame Impala, and - I'm not going to lie - probably the last, too. I like their tracks, but 51 minutes of it just seemed like too much.
I do approve of what's being done, but was just a little tired of it by 3/4 of the way through.
King Tubby
5/5
Beautiful, low, wobbly bass.
Childish Gambino
2/5
Just because you can do something experimental and different, it doesn't mean that you should.
I can appreciate the production, but this music leaves my boxes unticked.
Billy Squier
3/5
I'd originally misread the release date for this wrong - thinking it was a 90s album - which made me question all kinds of things about the sanity of the person submitting. As a 90s release, it's all kind of tired, done-to-death 80s rock, with multiple tracks that could easily and seamlessly have been slotted into the 1986 film masterpiece / toy advert "Transformers: The Movie" without anyone noticing.
As an early 80s release - well, it may well have been an introduction to the style. Given some of the other reviews on here, it might well have been.
Personally, I thought it was OK. There is no danger at all of me listening to it again - I'm sure not going to fit into the requisite skinny jeans - but it was nice to hear something from someone who was clearly very popular and influential at the time, but since has pretty thoroughly vanished from consciousness.
Not my thing, but I can see the value of it and why it's gotten a nod.
Crash Test Dummies
4/5
Obviously knew Mmmm mmmm mmmm from when it was new, but I think this might be the first time in thirty years that I've even considered that they'd have done anything else.
Listening to it, I have the question forming in my mind of if CTD invented the indie girl / cursive style of singing.
It's OK. Nice variety of styles, a step away from the "mainstream" of the early 90s. Definitely worth a listen.
Igorrr
5/5
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this immensely.
Was really not expecting to hear such a mashup of stuff, it very much appeals to my sensibilities, and while I'm not a fan of accordions generally, the presence herein did not offend me too much.
Good choice, good selection, good album.
Amon Düül II
4/5
Took a very long time to get started.
Stromae
5/5
Not reading anything about Stromae before diving in, I was prepared to accept this entry as being a really jolly good fun French hiphop album. Scrolling down the tracklist though I see the track "moules frites" and instantly this becomes a Belgian album.
With that in mind, it also becomes a surprisingly excellent Belgian hiphop album. At least, until Merci, it was an excellent Belgian hiphop album.
Merci just blew me away. What a take. The influence of Italo-disco on a thoroughly modern interpretation of piano-driven house, diverting in the second half to full synth - just great and I'm here for it. It takes this album up to an extraordinary Belgian hiphop album.
Yep, solid choice for the list, and I am definitely going to pay more attention to Stromae.
Faith No More
4/5
A solid late-grunge era album that escapes from grunge. There are some excellent tracks in this - notably the stand-out "midlife crisis". Some difficult tracks - can't say I'm a big fan of jizzlobber.
Switchfoot
1/5
My heart verily sinks when I see "2003" as the release date, and when you combine that with never having heard of Switchfoot in all my puff, it does not add up to a hopeful picture.
Starting to actually play it completed the trifecta - this album met my expectations exactly.
There are very few albums that will get a DNF, and this one joins them in ignomy.
Shania Twain
1/5
28 years ago, when the singles from this were being released, I absolutely hated all of them. Just that visceral reaction of "Oh for fucks sake" when you heard that "bap bap badow ba bap bap" in a nightclub and you knew it was time to go to the bar to get another pint of three point something percent lager and wait for that intermimable tripe to stop.
Nearly thirty years later, I can't think of many things from the late 90s that I miss less than Shania Twain.
It was everywhere, which didn't help, but then so was cigarette smoke and that literally gives you cancer.
My Chemical Romance
3/5
The Smashing Pumpkins of the mid-2000s.
Yes,i do mean it like that.
The National
1/5
Listening to this morose motherfucker on what was meant to be a cheering spring morning walk was absolutely a mistake.
Reading (with increasing bafflement) all the glowing reviews, I see that another The National album made it to the main list, which I had apparently blotted out of my memory. Re-reading my review of High Violet, I can say that this album is better than that one - at least this one doesn't have the overworked grandiosity of High Violet - but don't mistake that faint praise for me liking this album, because I absolutely do not. It's like Death Cab For Cutie without the charm, optimism or likeability.
Tori Amos
5/5
Oh hell yes.
There was not enough Tori Amos in the main list.
While I would probably have to say that Liite Earthquakes is a better album, this has the benefit of better production - the piano sounds genuinely incredible here.
I firmly believe that Boys for Pele should also be listed - could easily remove half a dozen David Bowie albums to make way.
Enough about Amos' other stuff though - this is meant to be about Under the Pink.
As a 14 year old boy, who'd just gotten his hands on a sound sampler, Cornflake Girl would have been one of the songs I sampled, I loved it. So unlike any the in the charts at the time, and loaded to the earballs with glorious, sumptuous piano. Sure, there's synths too, and a somewhat pedestrian drum going on, but the star of it is her keys. Clean, forefront and delicious to hear.
It makes me wonder, when Professional Widow from her next album got a dance remix, why Cornflake Girl didn't get a wonderful Tribeca loft bar house take done.
If anything could be said about Amos' vocals is that she is less powerfully vulnerable here than the preceding album - there's an edge and an anger that didn't really come through in Earthquakes.which kinda contrasts with the delicacy and easy confidence of her piano.
Still has the ability, thirty years later, to make me want to immerse myself in the sound, wrap myself up in it and live it completely for nearly an hour - and that makes me happy.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
3/5
You know what, I am actually quite glad that I've listened to this.
There is precisely zero chance I'll ever listen to it again, but I do appreciate the effort of putting it together.
Pink Floyd
3/5
Not every Pink Floyd album should be in the list. This one - well, it's just not as good as most of the four already accounted for. Saying that - it is leaps and bounds better than Piper. It is a diversion from Floyd's more usual introspective stuff - but it doesn't grip me. And that's a shame. Decent enough album, but doesn't reward an active listen in the same way that (say) DSOTM does.
Joe Jackson
5/5
Hey, this is pretty good. Wouldn't have thought to listen, asides from the recommendation.
Cheers!
Procol Harum
4/5
This is very competent, well put together music that I don't really want to listen to.
Sure, it's technically adept and the production is unbelievable for the age of the record, but one cannot help but know that somewhere behind the music there's a bunch of insufferable white guys.
Is it a good example of British 60s rock/blues - yes. Could it replace one of the many, many doubled-up artists from the same era? Yes - but would I rather have something that wasn't white guys from 60s British artists instead? Also yes.
Café Tacvba
5/5
I'm very glad that this came so soon after such an obvious 60s British rock album.
Very much appreciated the approach of taking pop, rock, metal and a whole grab bag of other genres and just saying "Yeah, this music is Mexican now pendejo!".
That's it. That's the whole venture.
I mean, it ain't much but it's honest work.
Bad Religion
5/5
Enjoyable punk, but I think I'd like to write more after another listen.
Jimmy Eat World
2/5
It's incredibly tempting to rate this as 3-stars, because the middle-of-the-road stuff on here is absolutely, purely and comprehensively middle-of-the-road.
However. The opening track (Table For Glasses) is excruciatingly awful. A snare drum every 3 seconds and a twiddly guitar accompanying a whiny dirge. Oh hey! Some dude's been given a glockenspiel!
The upbeat stuff is, by way of relief, a joy in comparison, but when looked at outside the context of the juvenile emo-ish dirges, it's literally just OK.
It is because of these dreadful over-long couple of tracks that this has to get dinged. Sorry.
Bleed American is a way better album.
Streetlight Manifesto
5/5
Despite the trepidation of a 2000s album from a group I'd never heard of before, and despite a slightly awkward start, this turned out to be a really enjoyable ska punk offering. Thoroughly enjoyed this, and will recommend to friends.
blink-182
4/5
Tell me you're an elder millennial without telling me you're an elder millenial.
Naturally Blink 182 started out kinda X-y but this album particularly has to be one of the signifiers, stating that Gen X had truly passed.
I think that the start of the changeover is probably pretty easily tied into the 1995 Amy Heckerling fillum Clueless. Clueless featured the dying strains of X - Bowie, Radiohead, Coolio, for real X-gen stuff. But notably there was also some No Doubt and Mighty Mighty Bosstones, whose ska-punk ushered in the millennials, and Blink 182, The Offspring and Green Day all jumped into new, more poppy and rocky variations, but all very noticeably shifting from a late X sound to a discernibly different Millennial one.
Naturally, as one of the last of X I find Blink 182 to be mostly juvenile and overhyped. That being said, a couple of tracks on here are genuinely pretty good. And they do very much exemplify the change of an epoch. So there's that.
The Posies
4/5
I'm not going to try and track down the stuff that's "no longer available" on Tidal - there's enough there to show that they're pretty similar to Dodgy. If you'd told me that some of these tracks had been performed by Dodgy, I'd believe you. If you'd told me that "Staying of for the summer" had originally been written by The Posies, I'd believe you.
It's decent music - I can't complain. Not something I'd take efforts to seek out though, unless I was very much in the mood for early 90s power pop.
5/5
Back in the late, 90s, early 2000s, a mate of mine followed the Eels round Europe on one of their tours and ended up meeting them after a security guard noticed he'd been following them.
That dude is now a music journalist, published in the NME, the BBC, Q, and a huge geet long list of other notable organs.
Dude's now living in New York City and for all I know might still be mates with Mr E. I'm sure he's a better writer on the subject of Eels' third album, but I'll give it a stab.
Daisies is unfortunate in that it starts off with Grace Kelly Blues. Unfortunate because while it isn't entirely terrible, it is a very bad introduction to the album. It has that awful Country-sounding guitar - intolerable - but the main thing is that Daisies is a bit of a departure from the wallowing, nerdy melancholy of nearly everything they'd done previously. I don't really think Daisies really picks up until I Like Birds - but from there on its just cracking.
Eels definitely deserve a second spot in the list, and Daisies just edges out over Electroshock Blues.
Amadou & Mariam
5/5
Yep I can get behind this.
Madvillain
5/5
Another of the journey of discovery things.
First thought was that this MF has obviously heard MF DOOM, but doing a bit of reading up, it actually is MF DOOM. What a delight!
This is better than MM FOOD but still has that sight tryhardism with the comic book, B movie schtick.
Arctic Monkeys
1/5
This is fuckin garbage. Trying so hard.
Yes, it avoids the androcentric aggression of earlier Arctic Monkeys, but still manages to capture the arrogance, the sneering disdain.
The work of someone who couldn't separate acclaim from value.
Fortunately it isn't an over-long album, although that doesn't stop it feeling both overlong and obnoxiously repetitive - four stars out of five ain't gonna happen. Sorry lads.
The Amazing Devil
5/5
The cover art has my interest. Let's have a listen.
I'm not usually one for "folk singer/songwriter" - but this album is the fuckin' tits, yo.
The old witch sleep and the good man grace... What a track!
1/5
This is deceiving.
Do not be fooled by the description as folk/indy - it's country. Dirty, mouth-harps and fiddles country.
Dnf for that reason.
Calibro 35
5/5
This is a bit of a mix up, really. Most of the tracks are a confusion between two or more different things being played at the same time, and while I really didn't enjoy it to begin with, o have the feeling that it might grow on me.
Graham Parker
4/5
This was considerably better on the second listen.
The Decemberists
3/5
Slightly over-indulgent, and why in the name of all things do people actively choose to have children singing (badly) on their records?
Other than that, well - it's kind of OK I guess.
Porter Robinson
3/5
Dullscythe is annoying.
I was pleasantly pleased that this had some really nice, poppy tracks that make you feel happy. Unfortunately it's interspersed with some experimental gumpf that sounds like a failed download.
The nice poppy stuff really is quite nice though.
The Caretaker
5/5
This caught me by surprise. I knew about the work previously, but failed to spot it as I absent-mindedly clicked through to set it away.
It took me about four minutes of the first track to get irritated by the repetitiveness. About forty seconds after that, it clicked what it was and I promptly stopped listening to it.
Not because I don't like it - it's an extraordinary piece and a statement of art -but because I really needed to listen to something that probably wouldn't make me cry as I was walking down to the pub.
You have to approach it for what it is. Something to experience, rather than something to listen to. It's good. Someone should be doing this kind of thing.
It isn't really "music" though.
Sparks
5/5
Yay! More Sparks!
In my review of Kimono My House, I opined that Sparks, in their 50-or-so years in the music biz, have just been there, doing great stuff. You probably never really think about them, but then you'll hear something of theirs and think "Well, this is really good!". You'll then try and think of something else that Sparks have done - and the song you'll think of will also be really good, but probably completely different... while also being very clearly Sparks.
They're massively influential for a reason - and that reason is that they're bloody good.
This album is more influenced, perhaps in that it takes Sparks a little bit away from pure, new direction innovation that they pushed in their previous 7 albums (SEVEN albums!). We're now layering the Brothers Mael over the top of Italo-disco. The influence of Moroder is clear, and it is beautiful. It is still new and fun, and an absolute joy 46 years later.
The Tragically Hip
4/5
Some fine Gen X right here.
Savages
4/5
I definitely listened to this yesterday, but as I come to review it today, I don't remember a single solitary thing about it, and that is somewhat rare.
Refreshing my earballs of it again, it filters through my consciousness as something I actually did quite enjoy, so let us accept and agree that while not memorable, it did give some entertainment, and as I listen again to "City's full", the vocals give me a little bit of a Grace Slick vibe and I'm very comfortable with that.
Boy Azooga
4/5
This is pretty good, I guess. Modern-sounding and nicely structured.
Robyn Hitchcock
2/5
Coming back to this in a mop-up more than six months after it originally popped up as a recommendation, I find myself just as challenged for a reaction as I have been every other time I try and listen to it.
I think I can see what he's trying to do - and there's bits of me that appreciate that he's pretty much Richard Dawson 25 or 30 years before Richard Dawson. Which is admirable. But I've never really been able to mesh with it. It's there, in the background, just kinda being there. Occasionally you'll try and re-engage and, when you do, you're left with the overwhelming feeling that what you're listening to might just be a more male, less funny and entirely less catchy version of a Victoria Wood song.
I'm going to go with two, mainly because I've tried several times with this and never managed to get anywhere with it, and not because I don't merely want to get it out of the backlog and need to listen to it again. No sir, not at all because of that.
Polvo
1/5
What bastard hybrid grungy shoegaze is this?
Yeah, this is a dnf - just too messy.
Rachel Stevens
4/5
This is inoffensive pop music.
We need to put some historical context into this, because Come And Get It was released in 2005, and in 2005, music was appalling. We'd had a few years of appalling music by this point, and while there were some tiny hints of improvement, here and there, the landscape was one where the music industry was pushing out utter garbage, taking zero risks on new and different stuff. By 2005, Pop Idol had been and gone, and The X Factor (functionally indistinguishable from Pop Idol, and every other singing programme that's come since) was what people were talking about. It was utter lowest-common-denominator shite, and it pervasive and inescapable.
What does this have to do with Rachel Stevens?
Well. Pop Idol was a creation of Simon Fuller. Who in the parted buttocks is Simon Fuller? Well, let me tell you. He was the manager of the Spice Girls when they were very much on the up. After the Spice Girls' success, he put together a new band, through a 100% manufactured audition process that later essentially became the process for Pop Idol. The "band" he put together was S Club 7, and that's where Rachel Stevens comes in, because she was in S Club 7.
S Club were campy trash, promoted out the wahooey via childrens' TV programmes and the incredibly lucrative gay scene - and they were huge for a while. Their hits were poppy nonsense, and the lowest of the low and the commonest of the common in terms of denominator.
Rachel Stevens emerged from this, and worked with - as the sleeve notes suggest - some of the more talented music producers of the time. And came out with this inoffensive pop music. At a time where music, generally, was offensive by way of being awful. The fact that this is inoffensive, emerging as it did from a wallowing hippo-pool of utter tripe, is actually quite noteworthy, historically speaking.
The actual music itself is disposable, but the fact it exists at all is the pearls before the swine of the music industry.
Daniel Bélanger
4/5
Mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Quebecois version of David Gray, but on the other hand, I couldn't help but think I was listening to the Quebecois version of David Gray.
If it'd come out two or three years earlier, and therefore not right at the time that White Ladder was the biggest selling album of the forever, it'd be an incredible album. But I'm pretty sure that White Ladder got played in Montreal cafes, which makes this ever so slightly less impressive.
TOOL
1/5
I get that the people who love Tool really love Tool and I'm happy for them. But Tool bore the very pants off me. DNF because I'm literally not going to learn or experience anything new.
Adam Green
1/5
This is truly terrible.
I can't decide whether it'd be more appealing to the painfully nerdy crowd who want something edgier than TMBG or to the painfully hip crowd who want something ironic to go with their detached, latte-drinking superiority fantasies.
Either way, it's terrible.
Wishbone Ash
5/5
Surprisingly melodic prog-ish stuff. Surprised it isn't better known.
A bit silly with all it's "warriors" kinda nonsense, but I guess it was the style at the time.
Freddie Gibbs
2/5
While this wasn't all that objectionable, the whole shuffling radio station thing had been done to death. And the less said about the drunken ranty voicemail message, the better.
Oingo Boingo
3/5
Much as I enjoy Oingo Boingo, and Danny Elfman generally, this is just a bit too much for me.
Individually the songs are decent affairs, but I can't help but feel that the pudding is overegged.
Marillion
3/5
An album that treads a delicate balance between out-and-out prog experimentalism and tried-and-true prog tropes. I think it often stumbles on that line and ends up with the prog trops. "Heart of Lothian" should really be called "Heart of Tedium, more Dunbar than Edinburgh.
Vampire Weekend
5/5
Was this really as late as 2010? I guess it must have been because it's actually pretty good, unlikely to have been from the 2000s.
Listened to it loads back then! Loved it. Let's see if I still do.
I do. It's nicely up-beat, takes a lot of influence from music that isn't the mass-produced pap of the previous ten years, and the label clearly wasn't afraid of "something different". I like it. I prefer the eponymous first album, but this is still pretty good and Vampire Weekend probably do deserve a spot on the list.
Modest Mouse
4/5
I can't pretend to like the first few tracks of this, but it does get better. So much so that the standout track for me was "Styrofoam Boots/It's all nice on ice, alright" - which starts after 65 minutes of the rest of the album have been and gone.
Louis Armstrong
5/5
Satchmo doing what satchmo does.
The quality of these recordings - from a hundred years ago - isn't always the best, but the skill sure is.
Definitely worth hearing.
The Angelic Process
1/5
Oh wow.
This is a strong contender for the worst possible type of music - shoegaze and doom metal.
Probably the only the thing that could be any worse might be "Bob Dylan does shoegaze" or maybe 'Merle Haggard does shoegaze, with backing by the Manic Street Preachers".
Oh ffs, it's over an hour long, too.
Yeah, I have given this a try. I got about a fortnight into it before realising that it was never going to win me over. Euch.
Roky Erickson
4/5
Sure, it was OK.
Great Big Sea
4/5
Interesting album. The sea shanty-type stuff is a good example of sea-shantying - the harmonies are good, the voices are true and that's kind of what you'd expect from a shanty. The rock-folk stuff pales when compared to equivalent stuff from around the same time (Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys - hell, even the Pogues from a decade prior!) but it's OK I guess.
Nice to hear it from a Canadian perspective, which has just as much import as the Irish & American Irish stuff.
Where this album falls down is the heartfelt rock-ballad stuff - looking at you "Buying Time". It's as if they've heard of Counting Crows, but don't really understand what Counting Crows actually is. At least the running time is comfortable.
Tally Hall
2/5
Yeah, this is a distillation of the nerd energy of TMBG, Jonathan Coulton, Flight of the Conchords and the like. It sounds amateurish, and I'm absolutely not surprised to read that they were relatively short-lived, producing only two albums and a few episodes of a web TV show.
I suspect that the cross-over between people who watched the web TV show and people who watched Dr Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog would have been considerable, obviously the latter with a far higher viewership.
It isn't unpleasant to listen to, but I just haven't got that switch that keys me into it.
Chucklehead
5/5
This was absolutely the tits. Surprised at the things it did, and it did them well. Good news.
Harmonium
5/5
This is user recommendation 106 for me, of 226 suggested so far. It's also probably also the tenth Quebecois French album.
This is by no means problematic for me - I thoroughly enjoyed visiting Montreal and would happily go back, but I am really quite surprised at how well represented Quebec is in the user suggestions. I mean, my suggestion also happens to be French Canadian, from an act I loved for twenty years before ever even setting foot in the provence.. It's actual really very surprising.
Anyway - this appears to be Quebecois prog. And that in itself is as surprising as the quantity of Quebecois music in the user suggestions. It suffers many of the most common pitfalls of prog, generally, in that it is massively over long at an hour and a half, and in many places it's overwrought and pompous. Those are faults of prog rather than, necessarily, Harmonium, who were working with what was the style at the time.
Like much prog though, the themes, motif and execution of stand so high that one has to regard the problems described as detractions from the definition, rather than the definition. You can almost forgive the duration because, well, it's good.
As other reviewers have pointed out, there may be a language barrier that makes this harder to appreciate, but I'd urge the listener to hear Serge Fiori's voice as an instrument, if you're not a francophone, as you will still gain much from him this way.
I am genuinely pleased to have heard this, so merci, and let's see how much more Quebec has to offer!
Transvision Vamp
5/5
Oh my, Wendy James!
I'm actually super surprised to see this as a recommendation, because while I absolutely love some of Transvision Vamp's songs (Baby I don't care is an absolute masterpiece) I am very aware that they were pilloried in the press at the time, and still haven't really shaken the stigma of just plain "being Transvision Vamp". I don't really get it - I really don't - but I will look forward to listening to this.
Yes, it is punky pop tosh and I'm here for it.
First Aid Kit
1/5
Most of this is entirely mid. The bits that are not are the disgustingly country bits.
Primus
3/5
One cannot overstate the technical brilliance of this album.
It's also difficult to listen to, because some of it is there slapping, and other bits are there being off-the-wall dissonant and unhinged - at the same time.
Yes, you should listen to it. But don't feel obliged to enjoy it.
Amyl and The Sniffers
4/5
Decent punky stuff. Fun to listen to. Not too long.
Shudder To Think
4/5
In the vast, overwhelming majority of cases where the artist says "I want this to sound like nothing and nobody else", the resultant mess ends sounding like everybody else's effort at sounding unique.
Music has rules - or at least guidelines - to follow, because if one doesn't, you get something that isn't really music.
Fortunately, Shudder to Think paw at the boundaries rather than flat out ignoring them, so this album is at least listenable.
It is quite nice to hear what people suggest.
Pedro The Lion
2/5
This may be good, but it is so far from my vibe that I simply can't appreciate it. Morose.
Death Cab for Cutie
4/5
Hey, Death Cab for Cutie!
In the grim darkness of early-2000s music, these guys managed to be "not awful", which is about as good as one can hope for from the time period.
Teenage Fanclub
4/5
OK, so this is a bit of a weird one for me. I have heard to Teenage Fanclub before, but despite being exactly the target demographic for them - that is a British teenager with taste for music like this - I have spent almost no time in the company of their music. It's alright - I suspect I'd have liked it more at the time, back in the 1990s as a teenager - than I do now, 30 years later. There's other stuff from that era that I'd go to way before this.
Chloe x Halle
5/5
Hey, I quite like this!
The B-52's
5/5
The B52s are absolutely underrated. While they could easily be dismissed as a novelty act, they've honed that act to a scalpel edge. Everything is placed perfectly, and you've got to give them credit for that. There's also quite a lot of fun to be had with that precision.
Jeff Rosenstock
4/5
In the first two tracks, this had everything it needed to be an insufferable pile of garbage. Fortunately, it picked up and became quite energetic and punky, which I ended up very much enjoying.
Bob Mould
3/5
Seems fairly mid to be honest. Kudos for him doing it all by himself, more than I could do.
Sufjan Stevens
1/5
He sounds like he's singing with his eyes closed.
How could anyone fail to be moved by this sentimental, softly-sung tosh?
The Weeknd
1/5
I absolutely hate, loathe and detest this album cover. Whatever it sounds like, it's going to get at least two points docked just for having the 2nd worst album cover since that other user suggestion for Thee Oh Sees Live in SF, where the guy's snot was flying out over the audience.
Grim.
Having listened to a few tracks - I can safely say that with the minus 2 for sleeve art, this would be one of the few to review at a straight zero.
Because it is very well produced with some nice beats, but it is boring as hell and there've been two skip tracks by halfway through.
Please note that the skips are entirely because of repetitiveness. There is only so much plaintive falsetto giving way to an even higher-pitched break that one can cope with. The space synths in the background add nothing to the mix.
If it had a less awful cover, it'd come out with a boring but not offensive 2. Blinding Lights is upbeat enough to dodge the rest of this whiny tripe.
Joe Cocker
1/5
1h16m of live album. Got to be shitting me, right?
He talks to the audience. You can hear the audience. That's not OK, you know?
While the actual playing is OK - why on earth do I need to listen to someone do cover versions? Live?
I don't. Strong DNF and an absolutely, 100% deserved lowest-I-can-possibly give rating.
Bran Van 3000
5/5
I submitted this, and I finally get to review it! Hooray!
Like everyone else in the 1990s, BV3k came to my attention courtesy of the Rolling Rock advert (featuring Drinkin' in La) and on the back of that, I was persuaded to buy Glee. Glee wasn't like anything I'd heard before, and it was a very strong contender for suggestion here. What Glee isn't, though, is accessible. James Di Salvio had put it together by contacting mates in the Quebec music scene, asking them for music and then throwing it all at the wall. Somehow something brilliant came out of it, but I can fully see why many people would be turned off by it.
Discosis is more accessible, but I can still see why the variety and pace of it would put people off. Di Salvio used pretty much the exact same approach as he had for Glee, though instead of approaching his mates from Montreal, he went through his record collection - getting work from Curtis Mayfield, Big Daddy Kane, Youssou N'dour, Eek-a-mouse and Jean Leloup to play with. That's astonishing, and the pedigree of the performers is testament to how well Glee did with people who were in the know.
Discosis opens incredibly strong - as other reviews have commented - with Curtis Mayfield's previously unreleased vocals forming the basis of a soul-lifting, foot-tapping journey, developing over it's 5¾ minute run into a fast-paced, Latinesque that feeds itself in perfectly to an all-over-the-place album.
The rest of the album may not quite reach the heights, but almost everything just fits together nicely. It makes me happy in ways that few other albums do. Despite this, I agree they should have ended it with Love Cliche, as Rock Star easily whimpers out as the weakest track on the album by a country mile.
I didn't know, when I submitted this (probably nearly a year ago) that there would be quite so many Quebecois acts represented in the user suggestions, however I don't have much in the way of regrets submitting this. If pressed again now I might have suggest Cymande's eponymous first album, but if I'm honest with myself, Discosis has the most play time of any album I've ever bought. So I'm sorry if you don't enjoy your experience with Bv3k. I think it's a grower, maybe give it another go, knowing it won't let you sit still and settle into a genre for very long. Set aside your expectations, be curious about where Di Salvio takes you and have fun. Don't worry about how you get there.
100 gecs
5/5
This is a whole grab bag of fun!
I'm Gen X. It makes me very happy to find out that this is what the youth are up to. the Boy, does this mishmash of glitch, dubstep, ska punk, metal and all the other stuff it is just hit exactly the right spots.
This is bv3k two decades on.
And I like it.
Best tracks on the first listen - Frog on the Floor and One Million Dollars.
The Postal Service
3/5
I quite like the music - though I'm not entirely convinced by the Death Cab for Cutie vocals and the interaction between the two.
LaBelle
5/5
Great stuff. Early days of disco, but not really truly disco yet.
Some of the slower numbers were a chore, but that's only really expected from 70s albums.
Arca
2/5
I get the idea of making something like this, but that doesn't mean I like it.
The Beautiful South
3/5
Moderately surprised to see some The Beautiful South in the list. Hull's best known export (outside of chip spice) making decent music in one of their later albums. Will be interesting to listen to this again for the first time in 25 or so years.
This is both better and worse than I remember.
The songwriting is perhaps more ambitious than on their earlier albums, but too often that ambition results in an absolute miss. Blackbird on the wire is the first of these - it's too pedestrian, too repetitive and too sentimental to justify nearly five minutes of album time.
Liar's Bar also over-eggs the pudding, this time trying to extend what should be two and a half minutes of appreciative homage into nearly six minutes of a chore.
The absolute low point of the album though is the cover of Artificial Flowers, which feels like a drag after just a few seconds, and laboriously drags us to the final two tracks of the album. One God isn't that bad, but once again Alone stretches out too long.
The radio play pop songs are grand.
Touché Amoré
1/5
Those vocals are incrediblely tiring.
Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
4/5
It's to picture something as American as this, but thankfully it is not rootin' tootin' truck-driving. It's your normal, average somebody listening to this while they drive to work.
It is average music for average people, done very well.
GAS
4/5
It's almost as if there's nothing there. Ambient music at its most transparent.
Weezer
4/5
This is not the last album of Gen X, but it is fairly close to the end of what could be considered Gen X.
The death knell and final nail of Gen X, and the true birth of the Millennials, comes with The Spice Girls/Pepsi tie-in song (you hate to read that, but the millennials who didn't get why The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were in Clueless are probably the one ones who'd truly disagree) Move Over. Weezer are still are flying the Gen X flag, but unlike their more famous and successful early predecessors and contemporaries, they managed to combine the idgaf outsider vibe of Gen X with actual fun.
This stands in stark contrast to Faith no More, Pearl Jam and the like, and it makes it hold up better now.
But they sold out massively by bundling the video for Buddy Holly with Windows 95!
Windows 95, for crying out loud.
I sure hope they got residuals for that.
This album actually appeals to me. I've listened to it before - back in the 1990s I'd say - and I certainly haven't felt need to since. It holds up relatively well today as an example of its time. I think I'd rather have this than one of the multiple Soundgarden offerings of the original list.
Good recommendation for the list - it is a piece of musical archaeology, encased in amber.
Men I Trust
3/5
Good heavens, yet another Montreal act in the user suggestions. Astonishing!
This is an enjoyable-ish puff piece that bumbles away in the background, never really filling the space it takes up. It skirts on the boundaries of jazz and ambient from the ambient side. It's OK - but I'm not feeling like I need to investigate further.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
4/5
More of an experience than an album. I like it, but I don't think I can listen to it often.
Avicii
3/5
This was tolerable, occasionally vaguely appealing pop-dance tosh. There is nothing world-changing about it, it merely exists to show that highly-polished mediocrity is still mediocre.
Killswitch Engage
4/5
This is pretty decent for what it is - not my thing, but competently handled. I actually managed to listen to it all without getting too tired of it, which is proper unusual for the genre.
Ornette Coleman
5/5
Top notch jazz. I'm glad I listened to it.
Edited review. I had misread something and thought this was some late 90s release of top notch jazz from someone who'd been playing for decades. Turns out it's from 1959 and someone relatively new to the scene - and that turns it from being top notch to something beyond. It is amazing. Extraordinary. Remarkable.
John Mayer
3/5
Reasonable, but uninspiring. Sure, the guitar work is faultless, but how can faultless keep you interested?
Kaizers Orchestra
4/5
Mid-2000s radgy indie, post britpop and would be appealing to the same sorts of people who like the interchangeable acts of the time - the Coral, the Fratellis, the rapture, the whatever.
This does have the benefit of not sounding like it has the sneering arrogance of the time. I could be wrong, I'm not great at Norwegian. The lack of, or my obliviousness to, that arrogance lifts the album slightly.
Chris de Burgh
4/5
I approach this with some degree of scepticism, but a willingness to give it a go. I'm struck, in the opening track, of how terrible his speak/singing is. The timbre of his voice does not compel, and the card-by-card accounting of the poker game between the Devil and God is painfully reminiscent of one of Arnold Rimmer's Risk stories. I was genuinely hoping for the moment God jammed the park of cards up the Devil's nostrils, head butted him on the nose and had the deck come blasting out of his ears.
Unfortunately that didn't happen, and we go meandering on to some "an evening with" style small-venue humourous stories, complete with frequent dips into honky-tonk piano.
Lord, when you're finished your poker game can you give me something to be enthusiastic about please?
I get that this is a very unique example of music for the list. The closest I can think of is Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner, but that doesn't have even a percentage of this album's tongue-in-cheek, knowing wink campy theatricality. I'd pick other people to demonstrate this style. Victoria Wood springs instantly to mind. Perhaps even Tim Minchin. Hell, Richard Cheese kinda does it.
Sure, it's unique and sure, musical and production values are sky high - but is this music I'd listen to for the pleasure of listening to music?
Aw, no. No it isn't. 4 for variety and novelty though.
Sampha
4/5
This is actually a pretty interesting platter. R&B that sounds British. I don't mean just the accents - this is British to the very core, and I'm definitely here for that in my R&B.
I do enjoy the diversions, meanders and wanderings of this, but what kinda lets it down is the overproduction. I've said before now that studio producers are hugely underrated, but every now and again you find a producer who showboats, and while I think Sampha might not be the worst offender for that, there are a total of six named producers on this cutting, and it shows. The diversions, meandering and wanderings are - genuinely - enjoyable, but I think as a whole it would benefit from more cohesive production, with a steadier hand at the tiller.
Definitely enjoyed, and there's aa strong chance I'll look for earlier stuff.
Crystal Castles
5/5
Hey! More Canadia representation! Not Montreal, admittedly, but still definitely from Canadia.
I do love me some chiptune from time to time, and despite being adamant that "they hate videogames" and this "not being chiptune" - sorry, eh, but you named yourself after a classic videogame and used Atari hardware to create a bunch of 8-bit sounds. I guess you're making chiptune eh?
This is a decent collection of aggressively electronic music, and I'm glad I've heard it.
Neutral Milk Hotel
3/5
A bit of a voyage, this one. Wasn't expecting it to be this - for some reason I imagined that it would be some minimalist ambient thing, but no - it started out being awful, lumber-shirt wearing indie tosh, obviously from before it was cool. Honestly though - it got better. I'm not going to hurry out and listen to it again, but meh, it's OK innit?
Talk Talk
1/5
Dear lord, this is a terrible album. Sure, it's nicely produced with a fair degree of dynamic range - but it is a tepid to the point of discomfort.
System Of A Down
3/5
Better than I remember it being - but still very much associated in my mind with teenagers in baggy trews and too much metal in their faces.
Is there anyone who really, really likes this album who didn't have one of those ridiculously distended earlobes?
The Dear Hunter
1/5
74 minutes of overindulgence. Sounds a bit like if Muse were trying to do long-form, and I'm not here for that.
As for the selection of it - do you really, genuinely think that this stands up as an album? On its own, not being part of the series?
Well I sure don't..
This is bullshit.
Boards of Canada
3/5
"Beware the friendly stranger" - this is Salad Fingers!
Why is the music from Salad Fingers in the user recommended list?
Sufjan Stevens
2/5
OK, so Sufjan Stevens is in the main list, and has 2 (to my knowledge) recommendations in the user list. I think he's perfectly adequately represented in the main list. The two user recommendations are significantly worse than the main entry, and neither of them do anything sufficiently different to justify inclusion.
Soz.
Emicida
4/5
Tony Christie enters the chat.
Is this the way to AmarElo? Has Emicida spent every night hugging his pillow? Is Emicida expecting Sweet Marie to be waiting for him?
Crap jokes aside, this is some decent enough Brasilia hip hop, with pedestrian but competently executed beats. The flow is decent enough, but having zero grip of Portuguese clearly doesn't help. I can only assume it's quite good. Thankfully he's got enough variety in his delivery to make it listenable - obviously not including the absolutely wasted jive talks about - well, I don't have the first clue, do I? I don't understand Portuguese.
Unwound
2/5
A curate's egg. Bits of it were delicious.
Björk
4/5
There is nothing particularly wrong with this album, but it honestly lacks the impact of others. For anyone else, it would be delightful. For Bjork, it's a bit of a continuation. I do think other comments are correct in that she's over-served in this list, especially as other albums hit harder.
Haley Heynderickx
2/5
Sounds like the soundtrack to a film where people cry a lot. Also sounds like she's singing with her eyes shut.
The first few tracks disappear into the background with absolutely nothing to bring me back into the listen. Sure, she's got a nice voice. But boy, do I find this dull.
Yeasayer
4/5
Hey, this is actually mostly pretty good.
Richard Dawson
5/5
Richard Dawson, local lad from just up the road, is really jolly good.
His track "Jogging" is his stand out best, but this album is pretty good. There's little "pleasant" about Peasant - but Dawson does love to subvert expectations. If you're hearing this as anything but a deliberately considered vehicle for making you feel something, you're perhaps missing out a touch. His lyrics are cynical, the delivery designed to be deceptive. I enjoy it a lot, although I wouldn't chose to listen to very often.
Great selection. If you really hate it - you can carry on with your life. If you're intrigued by it, or if you flat out enjoy it, I'd very much recommend listening to Jogging. It takes a lot of these dodges, swerves and chicanes and hones them down to perfection.
I just wish I was eloquent enough to write properly about this.
Bon Iver
2/5
This is tepid in a way that makes you think that Justin wossisface has gone out of his way to make luke-warm music. You'd expect to hear this in a chain coffee house. If you heard it in a pub, you'd leave.
Cardiacs
3/5
This has now been a three times "did not finish"
Which is odd, because I don't exactly dislike it. I much prefer the tracks which seem to rip off the John Lydon vocals over the ones that seem to rip off Damon Allbran or David Bowie.
Honestly, what this album is is way too fucking long.
After throwing literally everything at the wall to see what sticks, these guys went to the foot of the wall afterwards, picked up the hour-and-fifteen-ish minutes of the stuff that didn't stick and fastidiously, painstakingly glued it to the wall anyway.
A lot of THAT, came unstuck, so they went back, examining all around the skirting board to make sure they weren't accidentally standing on some of it, and proceeded to nail in the stuff that didn't, couldn't and wouldn't stick on in the previous two goes.
I've read some of the reviews, including that of the submitter, and the positive reviews are scarily reminiscent of how I feel about Lexx.
Lexx is a terrible TV show. The scripts are bad. The acting is bad. The special effects are bad. The music is bad. The plotlines are bad. Literally every single aspect of Lexx that could ever be plucked out and examined outside the context of Lexx itself is bad. No, not bad. Awful. Toe-curlingly, fist-clenchingly awful.
You regret every second you spend watching Lexx, because it is unimaginably, irredeemably bad. But if you persist, if you make it through, you're left with the honest and very real sense that you've experienced, witnessed and endured somethings astonishing.
I mean, you haven't. You've watched Lexx and that is objectively terrible by every measurable metric. But you actually feel good about having done it, which is genuinely very, very odd.
I'm afraid that despite the comparison, Sing to God does not compare.
There are moments of genuine interest in here. The last 3-4 minutes of "wireless" are divine. And, as previously stated I don't exactly dislike a lot of what's going on here. The vocals copy SO MANY people, and do so quite well. To get to true Lexx territory, all of these must fail.
Dirty Boy, for example, has hints of Brett Anderson of Suede as well as Paul Draper of Mansun. Neither comparison is ill-founded - and that's my point entirely. It too good in too many places to be the hot mess that it is. Despite the final note being held for what seems like 47 years - it doesn't disguise the fact that there is good stuff there.
And that's painfully unforgivable.
Daft Punk
1/5
Hey a live album from a electronic act!
Hear all of your favourite Daft Punk tracks, but lower quality! Also includes the whoops and hoots of the audience. You know, because you'd want that.
I've said before that live albums can absolutely do one, and this is one of the most utterly beautiful examples of why.
Refused
5/5
Good stuff. I wish punk had turned out that shape.
Protomartyr
4/5
This is a bit Nick Cave in places. It's alright.
Noname
4/5
I rather enjoyed this. Won't ever listen to it again, like, but glad that I heard it once.
Carly Rae Jepsen
5/5
Fun pop, although if anything should be hacked out of this for the sake of making a better, shorter album, it should be "All That" - yawn city on an album of fun, engaging pop.
Steven Wilson
3/5
Wow. The conceit of making a prog rock epic "from a woman's perspective" is frankly pretty astounding.
I can't say that it lives up to its ambitions. It is frequently subject to the ridiculous ornate overindulgence of the worst of prog as a genre, while not coming even close to the highs that that genre can afford.
At its best, it is competent prog. I certainly do not hate it, but I cannot for the life of my fathom it's inclusion when there's so much less wanky prog out there.
Debbie Gibson
4/5
Like others, I thought this was another troll suggestion. Listening to it, it is anodyne tosh. But it does capture that segment of the late 1980s in a way nothing much else on the list seems to.
Genuinely quite entertained to realise I remembered some of it.
John Martyn
5/5
This is really quite something. I preferred Solid Air from the main list, but this definitely a close second like.
Bloc Party
1/5
Absolutely indistinguishable from any of the other early-mid 2000s radgy post-britpop indie bands. Wasted slot, there is nothing unique about it, and we've already had enough of this kind of dreck in the list.
3/5
This is well constructed and does what it does well. Lummy, it's not exactly perky though, is it?
Jack Johnson
4/5
This dude fingers the fret like no fret has ever been fingered.
The copious string noise is to remind the gap year girls that acoustic guitar players are sexy, and that they should definitely sleep with acoustic guitar players, because girl, what else can them fingers do?
It is definitely music of the mid-2000s, but also it is music originating approximately 7,250 miles from Sheffield, which is about as far away from Sheffield as one can get in the Northern Hemisphere before one has to start moving either to the southern hemisphere, or (reluctantly) back to Sheffield.
And that means that it is SO MUCH BETTER than the sort of music that was so unfortunately popular in the mid-2000s, in that it isn't aggressively, sneeringly arrogant. It doesn't involve lager or kebabs or fighting.
Pleasingly, it is also not crunk, nor does it involve the preposterously large buttocks of white girl with a weave attempting to alter the fabric of space/time with the clapping of her cheeks.
It's just a guy fingering the fuck out of an acoustic guitar, and there's something honest about that.
Mustafa
4/5
This is pretty unexpected - not entirely sure what it was that I was expecting, but it sure wasn't this. Quite nice though!
Johnny Winter
3/5
Apart from the jarring country number randomly included in a collection of otherwise perfectly acceptable blues tracks, this is a fine record. Not great, as far as I can tell. But very much fine.
Fontaines D.C.
4/5
From what I remember of this before falling into a very deep and satisfying sleep, it was alright.
When I woke up, the algorithm had shifted me over to someone called Nilüfer Yana, and I really enjoyed what I heard of her, so thanks for something that had the algo make me happy!
HELLYEAH
2/5
The metal is fairly competent, by-the-numbers metal. I'd not call it noteworthy.
Korn
1/5
AAAARRRRREEEE YOOOOUU RRRREADY?
- actually not yet mate, can you give me a few minutes?
No?
Well shit, er... Just carry on without me then I suppose.
This is, admittedly, one of the first examples of Numetal, and numetal basically took over the mainstream for half a decade or so. So I'll grant its influence.
What I won't call it is good. Because it's embarrassingly edgy and can really only be associated with millennials, who appear to have the worst music taste of any generation in history.
Titus Andronicus
4/5
Well this is very odd. The opening strains (and I do mean strains) of this sounded like they were coming from a bluetooth speaker in another room of the house. They were not. But stereo imaging is good, isn't it, and occasionally you get something like this to come along and make you feel disconcerted. When the music kicks in, you've got some interesting production choices going on.
I don't know who this Tight-arse Andro-knickers is, but he's an interesting singer.
The album suffers from being 15 minutes too long. I liked the less "white-noise" tracks more.
Chromatics
5/5
Nice album. "Tick of the clock" is quite extraordinary. I like it.
Khruangbin
4/5
Decent album.
New Model Army
3/5
Not terrible, but definitely too long.
Backstreet Boys
1/5
Poppy tosh.
This is ultra-produced Max Martin stuff, and tells me absolutely nothing that wasn't established by Britney Spears. I tried to listen to it - but I can think of surgical procedures that I'd prefer to endure.
Bon Iver
2/5
This must be some millennial thing that I'm too Gen X to understand.
It's moderately inoffensive background pap, sung in a ludicrous falsetto.
Fits right in with mid 2000s music. That is not a good thing.
R.E.M.
4/5
Losing My Religion is one of those dreary songs that you wish was listed on every pub juke-box, along with anything by The Verve. Selecting any of those tracks won't, as you might normally expect from a pub juke-box, start playing your selection, but would instead correct you directly to The Samaritans. Because if you're playing it in the pub, you don't need to be in the pub, you need to be in therapy.
However - the album does pick up. Shiny Happy People is, of course, the stand-out track from this disc. DGAF what you say - it's lovely pop, and Kate Pierson is great on it.
"Belong" is also pretty close to the top. Most of the rest of the album wallows in melancholy, and it has to get a ding for it. Shout out to "me in honey".too.
The Chats
5/5
Exactly as short as it should be, which wins it points. As other reviewers have pointed out, this brings nothing new to punk as a genre - but then it doesn't have to. It's a solid example of punk with a 'Strayan bent, and I'm here for it.
Garmarna
2/5
Not for me. Great if you like it.
Another early-mid 2000s collection of arrogant indie. The first track fits neatly in with the overwrought self-importance of the era, falling into the trap that because it uses an orchestra, it might somehow be meaningful.
Strings don't make crap indie good.
Shit, there's also a theremin in there, because of course there is.
Yeah, the early-mid 2000s can absolutely do one, even if they're Danish.
Dead Boys
3/5
Despite only being a touch over half an hour, this feels too long...
The music is, as you'd expect from the title of album, quite heavy going. Perhaps it could be less fatiguing if it ever let up, but it doesn't seem to.
Never heard of the band before, and in small doses I think they do alright, albeit without doing much new or innovative discernible from just listening to it. Can't help but feel maybe the suggestion came from some personal, rather than objective reason, and that's fine.
Kano
3/5
On the first listen, it's really nice to hear some British rap. That said, the beats aren't really there for me, and I find myself having to be carried along by the flow. And that's a hard ask for over an hour.
At least it isn't arrogant indie.
Bruce Springsteen
1/5
An artist I have never been able to "get" doing a live show.
Yes, the odds are stacked against this one.
Gamely, I set it away. I'll grant that it has something that many live albums don't have - which is the audience shutting the fuck up while the artist is performing. At least, for the first track. It was well mic'd, the balances aren't bad - and then you get to the end of the first track and start hearing the crowd noises, which on any live album is just awful.
Really takes me out of the listening experience. And then I decided I'd have a look at the duration, to get an idea of how long I'd be needing to endure the whoops and hollers of the crowd.
Two hours and four minutes.
Nope. No, that's just taking the piss.
Live albums can absolutely do one.
Martha
5/5
Please note - I did not submit this album, although they are from literally about half a mile from where I live. I wouldn't like to swear to it, but I'm pretty sure I could walk to where this album cover was photographed within about twenty minutes. That's Durham cathedral in the background, there. To my knowledge, I've not met anyone from Martha but they are one degree of separation from me, so it makes me genuinely happy to see that people seem to enjoy them.
Despite this, I've never listened to this album in its entirety before. Has very strong A vibes, and that's not a bad thing.
Ween
5/5
I had completely forgotten that Ween ever existed.
Nice reminder. Voodoo Lady is an awesomeness track.
THE SPORTS
4/5
This was pretty enjoyable
Spose
3/5
Why no, it's German. "Get Rich or The Ryan".
This is a really mixed bag. On the one hand, there's a lot of tracks in here that I enjoy. However - it's an hour and half long, for crying out loud. That's too much for anything. Especially when, for a lot of this album, the flow is an offensively nasal monotone. Ryan clearly has some talent, and he can spit out the rhymes - but why on earth did he elect to include the drab, when he's overstuffed a double album.
I'd be prepared to go 4 stars for this, but the duration and the adenoidal efforts must ding it.
Les sheriff
4/5
Of course there's going to be a groan and a rolling of eyes at the double atrocity of a double live album.
Fortunately, punk albums are almost universally around the half hour, thirty five minute mark, so this double clocks in at an hour ten - which is too long, but not as heinous as some double albums, either on the list or in the user recommendations.
Also the micing and the mixing has avoided (for the most part) audience noise, which contributes nothing but annoyance and exasperation to live albums. So it isn't as bad as it could be.
All this considered though, there is absolutely no way in hell I could give this recommendation a top billing. If it was studio and double, it'd probably get a five. If it was live, but only 35 minutes, it might join the literally four albums to have been given that top rating. But these guys are not Fela Kuti, and they're not Duke Ellington. Nor are they Jerry Lee Lewis or Muddy Waters, so they absolutely will get a ding.
I actually quite enjoyed it. I especially love the reference in the submission review to how few Quebecois entries there are in the user reqs, mainly because I'm guilty of having suggested a bilingual album from a Montreal act, but also because Quebec now has tens of albums featuring in the lists.
There is plenty of energy here, and a reasonable variety which makes the over-long play time seem tolerable. But it needs to be shorter or studio-produced, and I'll not hear otherwise.
Frightened Rabbit
3/5
It's OK. Not my sort of thing really, but it's OK.
Jimmy Eat World
5/5
This is the J. E. W. album that you'd include, as it is much, much better than Clarity. Yes, I agree with you entirely that Hear You Me is an awkwardly over-sentimental effort that's almost a pantomime version of strum-along heartwrenchers like the Goo Goo Dolls' Iris or The Verve Pipe's The Freshmen. No, you're right, it's the weakest song on the album and I couldn't blame you at all for skipping it. All the slower-paced stuff on here is weak.
However - what Jimmy do splendidly is, well, all the other stuff on the album.
There's something about The Middle that punches me right in the plums. It's deceptive, seemingly a nice, boisterous, uplifting pop-punk anthem. Simple lyrics, repeated effectively. The continued assertion that everything will be alright somehow takes whatever mood I'm in and plants a seed that maybe everything isn't as alright as it seems. This is probably the core of emo, and while I should be dismissive of the button-pressing, deliberate nature of it - every time I hear it, it strips off a piece of me before sellotaping it back on. It's a remarkably effective track, and I think it deserves every single bit of success that it had.
I should also specifically call out Get It Faster. It is delightfully cynical. I first heard this being covered by a local band some time around '07, possibly '08 and I loved it. The construction of it is faultless and I would struggle to think of any way it could be improved.
Another reviewer made an observation about every generation wanting to skewer what came before. Sure, but delighting yourself as an Xer that the dastardly millennials who had skewered the beautiful GenX stuff held sacred to you are now getting their stuff skewered by Gen Z is, as the kids would say now, cringe. Yikes. I am also an Xer, and I'm calling you out for your pishtosh.
Things change, but not everything different is worse.
Electric Callboy
5/5
This is actually a lot of fun. Sillu exuberance, wrapped up like the bastard child of Scooter and Rammstein.
Don't take it too seriously, it's not meant to be world-changing.
Phish
1/5
A two hour live album will, by default, start at 1/5. Let's see if it can claw anything back from that.
OK, so I'm less than two tracks in and there is an even more heinous sin. Audience participation.
Unforgivable.
Times New Viking
1/5
Wow.
This is so distorted that it becomes legitimately painful. The more it plays the more I'm reminded of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, in that it is something I never ever want to hear again.
CAKE
5/5
This has been a favourite of mine since the 90s - I'm glad it popped up today after Times New Viking's terrible effort yesterday. The only thing that detracts from this album are the occasional forays into country. Ew.
Ex-Easter Island Head
5/5
Yep, this is pretty good. Can get behind this.
The Chameleons
5/5
It would be easy to ask why The Cure got so big when these guys didn't. It'd be easier to answer - because The Cure were better.
But to be in the same thought as The Cure means you're pretty damn good.
Nightwish
2/5
Well this is melodramatic, isn't it?
While I'm sure that it does what it does with aplomb, it does not so anything much for me. One or two tracks might be OK, but an whole album if it is fatiguing.
Gang of Youths
4/5
Got better over the duration... The fat that should have been trimmed is front-loaded.
Slowdive
2/5
I am not, and never have been, a fan of shoegaze. This album is no exception. It is also an hour and a half long. If it is your thing, hurrah. It is not mine.
Neil Cicierega
3/5
Get a load of 90s samples, wow millennials with the clever way you can mash up songs with similar chord progressions.
It's endearing, in a way, but Neil Cicierega did more noteworthy stuff with Lemon Demon, being able to nail "catchy" really very well. I'd love to give higher, but Avalanches did cratedigging better and I'm not sure NC was the first to the party with mashups.
Valerie June
2/5
There is something about this voice that cuts through me like the jagged glass of a smashed bottle tearing through blancmange.
I think I could probably learn to appreciate the music, but that voice is intolerable.
Tosca
4/5
This kind of picks up the mantle from Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation etc. It's the sound of a trying-too-hard loft bar in the early 2000s, and while I personally really quite enjoy it, it's not as effortlessly cool that previous genre examples can be.
Baroness
2/5
Wow. Epicness with the epic dialed up to 11.
Im struggling to think of many things on the list that are as EPIC as this.
And that sure gets tiring over the duration of the double album.
"Weird Al" Yankovic
4/5
Definitely worth hearing - it's pure silliness from a silly, silly man.
Olivia Rodrigo
4/5
Well, I was prepared to write this off as overproduced tosh - but there are two (possibly three) things which made me reconsider.
Firstly, I refuse to accept that Olivia Rodrigo is anything other than 2023's Avril Lavigne. Except with better production.
Secondly, I refuse to accept that Olivia Rodrigo is anything other than 2023's Alanis Morrissette. Except with better emotional intelligence.
Probably thirdly, I refuse to accept that Olivia Rodrigo has much talent beyond listening to her producers, who have engineered the living fuck out of this album to the point that one questions whether there's any Olivia Rodrigo left in it. Stylisticly, she's all over the shop. Catchy pop, rocking out and piss-boiling cursive, it's difficult to pin anything on her. Sure - I'm impressed that she can handle that, but there's nothing to convince me it's her choice. If it is, the production has drowned it out almost entirely.
We should come back to the emotional intelligence. She talks about stuff that Alanis talked about in the mid-90s - which is fine. Emotions are timeless. But - she approaches these in a different, and far more productive way. Whereas Morrisette said "How could you do this to me and be such a dick". Rodrigo says "How could I be such a dick for not seeing what a dick you were?".
It is genuinely refreshing, in the 2020s, to hear that.
She's poppy, and the overproduction is as massive as a black hole - but for a 2020s record, I'm happy that this might be where the kids are going.
Introspection and self-analysis for the win.
Chet Baker
5/5
Absolutely superb. Great choice. I find it difficult to believe that this was recorded over 65 years ago.
ISIS
3/5
Technical metal at its most technically. I enjoyed it - though not enough to seek out more of the same.
Reincidentes
4/5
¡Ay caramba!
Boredoms
1/5
Yes, this is absolutely terrible.
I'm no stranger to noise. I often even enjoy it. But while lots of noise rock will leave you feeling like your earballs have been assaulted, the good stuff will leave your brain with a hole in it that demands to be fed more. You'll want it, and you probably won't be able to explain why.
While Chocolate Synthesizer goes on to be better than it's utterly abysmal opening track, it never really gets to the point where you start to acclimate to the earball assault. It'll feed in actually pleasant sounding riffs and hooks from time to time, and that's not what I want from my noise rock.
When it is over, my brain does not demand to have its hole filled. My subconscious is not like a jill-ferret in heat, quivering and whimpering from an edging. I am simply glad of its absence.
Also - this is practically impossible to find anywhere other than YouTube. Do yourself a favour and listen to Melt-Banana instead. Sure, they're later (chronologically) than Boredoms, but they leave you wanting, needing, yearning for more.
Fall Out Boy
2/5
This sounds like the bastard child of mid-2000s Black Eyed Peas and the incidental music from an episode of Lucifer.
While a couple of the tracks are alright - I'd not consider this to be a "must listen" by any stretch.
Mull Historical Society
3/5
Asides from Watching Xanadu, this is pretty forgettable pop music.
I mean, there's little wrong with it. I like that it has been suggested - it's clearly something that actually means something to the submitter, which is quite a refreshing change from some of the stuff that's come through for me recently.
I'd rather listen to something that made a connection to someone than the ultra-hipster "you've never heard of them" recommendations. I'd frankly rather listen to this than "What's left by Tool that hasn't been suggested yet?", and the less said about the edgelordy troll suggestions the better.
So I might listen to Watching Xanadu again. But the rest will, doubtlessly, fade into obscurity.
Deltron 3030
5/5
So far I'm four tracks in and I'm won over by it. Yes, it's a bit of a silly concept but the flows are tight and the beats compelling. Two thumbs fresh.
The Heads
3/5
The first track is grand. The rest, well. Not as good. Some decent, some atrocious.
Duncan Dhu
3/5
Well, Tidal links through to the special edition, which at 2h39m is comfortably into the territory of an "asshole" suggestion. The perfectly normal edition is, itself, 1h21m24s - which is also too long.
However - this is some Spanish crooning and it's gentle enough to meld into the background so meh.
John Coltrane
5/5
The very first seconds of the very first track, and I instantly spot that Bran Van 3000 sampled from this album. Splendid!
I'll admit, I've never heard of Johnny Hartman before, but I'm vaguely familiar with John Coltrane, so I'm pretty sure that I'm going to absolutely love this.
Aftrr listening, I can confirm that this is some sumptuous jazz.
Nice selection.
Aesop Rock
4/5
Could you call this technical rap?
I mean, the flows are incredible.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
3/5
See the little goblin,
see his little feet!
And his little nosy-wose,
isn't the goblin sweet!
Ian McDonald
5/5
Bruce Hornsby
4/5
This is a very well-produced album from 1993 displaying the very best that 1984 had to offer.
Tom Misch
4/5
This is some nice-enough, easy listening funk that sounds like it wouldn't be out-of-place as incidental music in a low-budget rom-com.
Floating Points
5/5
Minimalist (I'd almost go as far as to say ambient) jazz from one of the great jazz musicians, supported by a world-class orchestra.
Yes. this is a lovely piece of work, and I'm glad I listened to it. Thanks for the suggestion.
The Notwist
4/5
Nicely produced, experimental-ish music. It's not particularly challenging, but it fills your earballs well enough.
Alabama 3
5/5
OK, so there's something about weird about the listing for this in Tidal. That seems to be a Tidal problem rather than anything to do with this project, but on tapping into "Exile On Coldharbour Lane" from the Alabama 3 artist page, you're presented with a 5-volume album totaling over four hours of music. Now, that would top the "asshole" list for ridiculously long suggestions easily, even if the music were brilliant. Anyway, looking at the Wikipedia page and the tracklist contained within, "volume 5" of the collection appears to match the track listing of the original album, so maybe Alabama 3 have gone and retrospectively added shizzle into it, or Tidal have (once again) mistakenly stuck things together that shouldn't be stuck together. Who knows?
Anyway - getting into the actual album. It's canny. Some tracks take me right back to the 1990s. Pretty sure that "Peace in the Valley" was on the soundtrack to A Life Less Ordinary, a film with a far better soundtrack than it deserved to have. I guess a lot of people were riding high on the inspired musical choices from the Trainspotting soundtrack, a film Danny Boyle directed a couple of years previous, and maybe thought they'd get a similar boost from it. Fortunately, despite being (if I recall correctly) the finishing track from the film, the actual soundtrack CD didn't include the truly dismal Oasis, despite "Round Are Way" being one of the more tolerable tracks from them.
Anyway - this album truly picks up with Mao Tse Tung Said, which is a fantastic track. Superb. Love it. To take speeches by one of the most heinous murderers out there - a killer of over 900 people, 276 of them children - is something I'm not sure how to feel about. That the quote is of Mao, whose policies, actions and inactions lead directly to the deaths of probably around 50 MILLION people - lends even more greyness to the appreciation of the track.
Ultimately, Alabama 3 did some interesting stuff with music which wasn't being done in the mid-late 90s, and it goes from toe-tapping to genuine reflection on the horrors of man. Definitely worth a consideration.
Oh, and I have literally never seen The Sopranos.
The 1975
3/5
This started out sounding like the bastard child of Ah-ha and every single Backstreet Boy. It rapidly became awful with "All I need to hear", before picking back up again.
I genuinely can't decide whether whoever suggested this is a teenage fangirl or someone related to someone in the band... Because it's just not that good.
Comus
4/5
OK, so I'll state up front that this, on the first blush, seems like some bullshit gnomes and goblins prog tosh. It does, thankfully, have some genuinely interesting music in it.
Nujabes
3/5
This sounds like the kind of late 90s stuff that made Nuyorican Soul do so well - but from the mid-2000s. Surprising to find out that it's from a Japanese DJ. It's OK - better than most, but not something I found to be world-altering.
Robyn
5/5
This is pop in a splendidly true form. The production is eclectic, with some odd choices here and there - some hideous clipping and distortion really pull you out of the vibe. The vibe is definitely there, though - upbeat music with less-than-upbeat mood and lyrics.
There are some stand-out tracks. Dancing on my own is great, but it isn't the best. Call your girlfriend is. Without doubt, hands down one of the best pop tracks of the past 20 years.
The Church
3/5
After listening to this the first time, I realised I had absolutely no memory of what it was, other than that is was nothing like "Under the Milky Way". Listening again the following day, I realise that The Church have, over a 45 year career, changed their music quite a lot.
Unfortunately for me, the direction they moved in appears to be a bit shoegazey - a genre that I find very difficult to enjoy. That being said, I didn't object to this half as much as I objected to the follow-up stuff like The Jesus and Mary Chain shoegaze that Tidal algorithmed to when this album finished, so I guess we need to give them some credit for being a lot less objectionable than the genre they chose.
I think I'd have picked an earlier album - but I definitely agree with The Church being notable enough for inclusion.
Paul McCartney
4/5
Spun this up expecting it to be less entertaining than it is. Irritatingly good - but also something I'd not expect to find myself listening to again, mainly because some of the tracks are way too over-long. There is absolutely no justification for Monkberry Moon Delight to be nearly 5½ minutes long. And there is even less reason for Long Haired Lady to be over 6 minutes long.
Yes - it's enough to ding the album.
of Montreal
4/5
I was almost prepared to vote this down on the principle of it starting out with a child or something making objectionable noise, but it quickly becomes quirky and fun so that's a relief.
Yo La Tengo
4/5
This is a decent enough album with the occasional stray into things that sound overindulgent and almost shoegazey.
TOOL
1/5
Ah, the fourth TOOL album in the user list. From five released.
I suspect that it will be fatiguing.
Here I am just beginning to start "ticks and leeches", and I think "This drumming would probably be great in some neo-swing. And then the guitars kick in and you're just like "oh, it's more TOOL."
And you're minded to look at the track list to discover that it's track 8. And that means there's five more tracks to go. For a total running time of an hour and sixteen minutes. Of fucking TOOL.
This will be the fourth TOOL album from usersub that gets a DNF from me.
Yeah, we get it TOOL fans, you love TOOL and I am genuinely happy for you. Given the choice between TOOL and silence though, I'm going to pick silence every time.
Yawn.
Roger Waters
3/5
Proggy. Lacks the je ne sais quoi of Pink Floyd, but has buckets of gloopy sentimentality, scads of ostentatious noodling, and softly spoken lyrics of utterly inconsequential tosh.
The production is very decent - I think it's safe to say that this is an album with high dynamic range. You'll probably be irritated by some of the odder choices - there's some genuine cheese in some of the backing vocals, and multiple tracks include muffled and distant voices, which I guess is a choice.
The Tragically Hip
4/5
So yeah, these guys were doing stuff like this at the same sort of time the Americans were starting to feel their way around grunge.
I mean, it's OK - but only OK as far as I can see.
Mr. Bungle
3/5
I do believe that I had heard of Mr Bungle previously, although I can't claim to have heard Mr Bungle.
I am genuinely unsure whether I appreciate this album or not. On the one hand, it is a rare album for me that specifically resolves itself into a "I should listen to this again to see if it grows on me" as a first reaction.
On the other hand, why isn't it something I like on the first listen?
I'm really going to have to give a holding response so I can attempt it again on a quiet Sunday afternoon when I've already had as many baths as someone can reasonably have.
The Breeders
5/5
Cracking album. First track is a bit of a feint, but it rapidly establishes itself as really solid Gen X music. I approve.
Mogwai
4/5
Background music. It's pleasingly noodly, although I can't imagine anyone actually being engaged by it.
Foxing
3/5
There was nothing specific about this that made me think it was bad - however, there was also nothing distinguishable about this. Why should I care about this entirely middle-of-the-road work by a band I've never heard of? It's tempting to wait until the person who suggested this can give some interpretation of it.
Sam Fender
3/5
Sure, it's a decent (if derivative) album - but as a choice?
Wow.
Alexisonfire
5/5
Why does Ms Onfire have a knife?
She's clearly gone off the tracks a bit. Talking of tracks - I'm listening to this via the Tidal app, but I'd actually started it off on the web player first, so for the first two tracks I was accidentally listening to it twice concurrently, just time-drifted by about 35 seconds. For most music, that would be a hideous cacophony. On this record, it didn't actually make all that much difference. So much so that I didn't notice until the second track finished, leaving its 35 second time-shifted version the only bit playing for a while.
What can I say about Alexis, other than that I don't really enjoy her style of music? I hope she doesn't stab me up.
The spoken word bits seem to be based heavily on Air's "The Virgin Suicides" - and that's fine. The screamy stuff isn't half tiring, though. I'm afraid that overall this was another DNF. It has set out its stall in the first few tracks and I can see no benefit to subjecting myself to more if it, expecting neither a change in the music or in my reaction to it.
Vampire Weekend
5/5
This is a pretty tough review for me.
I actually really like Vampire Weekend's stuff - but hadn't heard this before the recommendation. I'm not 100% sure that there's anything particularly new to it that they hadn't done in previous albums. That being said - it's a canny album, unobjectionable, apart from the somewhat janky-sounding production, which somehow manages to get some things to be crisp as an autumn leaf, but leaves other things (particularly the hi-hats) to be as muddy as a fenland field in March.
The de-tuned piano HAS to be deliberate. There's no way it could sound so off without it being on purpose.
There's also a surprising amount of synth in this for Vampire Weekend - so maybe that is the "something new"?
Saying this - needing to put something in for a review had me re-listening to it. And I think this might well be something that rewards an active listen, because there's a lot more in it than the original jangliness might first indicate. Maybe I'll spend a bit more time with it.
Living Colour
5/5
This is a pretty decent album, although I would find it very difficult to give any indication as to what it's like. Some jazzy, some rappy, some funky, some punky. I'm glad I've listened to it.
Yellowcard
1/5
Well, this sure is music from the early 2000s!
Was it featured in the Road Trip soundtrack? Does it have a tattoo on its lower back?
I'm sure that this album is an important part of someone's teenage years, but its only value to me is a slice of everything that was utterly awful about the state of music in the early-mid oughts.
Weezer
4/5
I never really got into Weezer back in the 90s. Sure, like absolutely everybody else I knew Buddy Holly, but that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge.
I probably should have been introduced to this album of theirs though, because it gives a nice variety of musical styles that I simply wasn't expecting.
It's not world-changing for me, but there are some pleasing tracks in here that I genuinely rather like.
Rita Ora
2/5
There's some decent-ish pop in here, nothing much to complain about. The abrupt ending of Praising You isn't half jarring, though.
Charly García
4/5
The track "piano bar" is where this really kicks up a notch, bam!
Savatage
4/5
Metaaaaaal!
🤘🤘🤘
Black Devil Disco Club
5/5
OK, so I've listened to this three times on loop. It is better than it has any right to be. Five stars, easy.
Harry Styles
2/5
This is pap.
I can see the argument that there isn't a great deal of manufactured pop in the original list, or indeed in the user suggestions, but what there was - Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys particularly - exemplified the kind of vapid, inconsequential tosh that this is.
No, it's not terrible, but it's also nothing to write home about and there is absolutely zero danger of me listening to this again. There's nothing to make me think "wow", or even anything much to make me think anything at all.
Lowest Common Denominator, space-filling and of zero import.
Chico Science
4/5
This is pretty good, fun. No clue at all about what it's about. Not sure I need to.
Spinvis
3/5
Een solide drie.
Talking Heads
2/5
Talking heads have some decent music - and apparently as a live act they are pretty tight.
However - that does not excuse this being a live album, made up of songs that appear on better, studio-produced albums that are already in the list.
Looking back - Talking Heads got a very consistent 4 star rating for everything they had in the main list, and that probably should be the starting point for this. However - we absolutely must weigh that against the fact that ANY live album starts out as a 1-star. So, let's be fair in our appraisal of this. The audience noise is minimal, and everything seems to be nicely mic'd and balanced. And to be fair, they are very good live, so we're going to have to put on a couple of stars for that.
But. This is literally repetition of the main list, so that needs another ding.
A two-star rating isn't a criticism of Talking Heads. The fact they're getting more than a one-star is actually remarkable for a live album. But we do not need this - and I certainly don't need worse versions of things I've already heard from the list.
Eric B. & Rakim
5/5
I do love it when I hear an album that's been recommended here, and realise that "Hey, this is where that thing I absolutely love is sampled from!" - and in this case it's "I Know You Got Soul" - which was sampled by DJ Steve Thorpe in his mix "blow the speaker". Steve Thorpe was resident in the breaks room at Tangled - one of Manchester's longest running club nights, and to this day I think that "blow the speaker" is one of the best DJ sets I've come across - you can find it on his SoundCloud and I suggest you do.
To hear it here in presumably its original form is quite, quite wonderful.
But - that's a distraction from talking about the actual album at hand, which is also wonderful. The flows are tight, the beats minimalist - dry but catchy. The scratching is accomplished. You'll spot things throughout this that became hip-hop staples, and that's just great.
Great suggestion - and one I'd argue should be in the main list. Punt out a valueless Dylan album, for sure.
Jai Paul
4/5
This is pretty nice - modern, experimental. Would be lovely to hear what it'd be like if he finished it.
That being said - his use of big, wobbly bass around the 50-55hz mark is a touch over the top. Sure, I get it. A lot of stereo systems will be tailing off around then, and he's probably deliberately produced that 10dB higher than the rest of the track to try and squeeze bass out of headphones or a car stereo or something.
What he's doing, for self-produced music, is great. I think he needs someone experienced to give him a a few of those gentle little nudges to make it into remarkable.
Extrechinato y Tu
4/5
I remember being pleasantly surprised by the variety of this.
Amália Rodrigues
3/5
Difficult to review.
I accept the accomplishment of a, like, 900 year career in singing, and she sure has got a voice. But - it's a "best of" album, it's too long and there's no indication of where in her career these tracks came from.
I doubt I could listen to a full hour of this, but that doesn't mean I don't think Amália Rodrigues isn't good and worthy of a spot on the list.
WHY?
2/5
I'm actually quite interested in the provenance of this record. The nasal, whiny, semi-spoken, er, I guess you could call it rap, reminds very vaguely of Eels, with Mr E's detached narrative description of the streets near Susan's House. However, this is a decade after Susan's House, so where have WHY? taken their other influences from?
It is indeed an intriguing cut - drier and more sardonic than The Streets, who this also vaguely puts me in mind of.
I can't claim to like this music. Many of the lyrics make me feel that maybe there's some sneering racisms tucked in there. Nothing overt, but I don't much like it.
Also. Calling yourself Yoni is, in the language of the mid twenties - nocap cringe.
Lady Gaga
3/5
Holy shit. This album is old enough to order itself a Barefoot Zinfandel Rosé - which is absolutely what this album would order, maybe with a spritz of soda but definitely with some ice in it.
The pop songs are poppy, some of them have stood the test of time - nearly two decades on and Pokerface still sounds pretty fresh.
I'm pretty sure that Lady Gaga is not a hermaphrodite. It seems bonkers now that that was ever a thing.
Eh Eh, though, could easily be an SAW track from the late 1980s, and that double underlines and highlights the point many other reviewers have made, which is that the second half of this album is nowhere near as good. At 54 minutes, there is absolutely scope to have removed quite a bit of cruft.
Matthew Good Band
2/5
Wow, college rock lasted until the very late 90s in Canadia.
This album is not held by Tidal. It's unavailable on YouTube unless one sets one's VPN to Canadaland.
And honestly - it's not worth the effort. They're trying for a stadium rock sound while labouring under garage band limitations. There's nothing bad, per se, with this music. But it sure is uninspiring and tepid, trying very hard to be meaningful.
I'm glad it makes you happy, submitter, but I'd struggle to think of a more mid example of this type of thing.
Karnivool
2/5
I sit here listening to this, thinking "Well - it's metal isn't it?" and, detached and uninspired by it, I casually flick up the playing time. 1h16m?
Yeah, balls to that. Wait. There's two versions on Tidal. I've not picked some kind of "super-deluxe" edition, have I, where you hear the studio album and then hear the live version tacked on after? No. The other version is 1h12m. Double balls to it!
I'm not grippered by this enough to want to subject myself to that much metal. It's background music that I don't think would be improved by an active listen. Got to the end of "All I know" before this album gets filed under DNF.
Danny Brown
2/5
Well, Atrocity Exhibition sounds like it's going to be lighthearted and fun.
Death metal, maybe? Or filthy dubstep? Let's find out!
Holy crap, hip-hop is the very last thing I was expecting. Is his voice going to continue being a continued impersonation of Granny from the Ohio Players' Funky Worm?
Thankfully not. I do wonder if the word "copacetic" was invented specifically for rap.
Track four - Really Doe - Granny is back. FFS.
Overall, it's alright with some very very questionable vocal choices. Won't bother to listen again.
Susanne Sundfør
2/5
Fully prepared to DNF and give it a slating as "Reincarnation" sounds like county music, and that's not OK.
I skipped reincarnation after an interminably long time, and so far the album hasn't been country again, which is I guess in it's favour.
Undercover is also kinda county, so unfortunately the album gets dings for that. Repeated country-ism suggests that it was done intentionally, as if country was something people might actually want to hear.
It also gets dings for being dull. I am unmoved by its sustain-pedal sentimentality.
Final Fantasy
4/5
Reading about a connection with Arcade Fire, and indeed contribution to Arcade Fire, I started this off expecting it to be utterly terrible.
It isn't - it's actually quite charming.
In direct contrast to Arcade Fire, this remains firmly on the outside of its own arsehole, rather than disappearing entirety up it at the earliest opportunity. There is a wry acknowledgement of itself. If Owen Pallett had played this straight down the bat it could easily have been pretentious codswallop, but instead he's included enough winks to the camera to let you in on it, but not so many that it becomes postmodern onanism. I'm glad to have heard it.
BABYMETAL
2/5
A second Babymetal album in the user list? Unnecessary, but I guess even weebs can be metalheads.
This album isn't terrible, but it does feel far too long. At 35 minutes that's almost impressive - but mostly these tracks blur into what they are - jpop mixed with metal. I think it probably most appeals to a certain kind of person, and that person is not me.
Damien Rice
4/5
Asides from a few moments where this became repetitive, I rather enjoyed it. I might even listen to it again.
Maldita Vecindad Y Los Hijos Del 5to. Patio
4/5
The first track is Spanish and punky? Spunky?
It becomes much more poppy and rocky thereafter - sprocky?
Decent enough album, although I don't have the first clue what they're singing about, which is always a risk. I could be humming along here to some guy describing utterly despicable things. I'm not sure I am, so let's just say I enjoyed it.
Modern Life Is War
4/5
D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S. is the standout track from this. There's enough variety in the music to make the shoutiness less oppressive, and it's short enough to get the message across without overstaying its welcome.
Better than it might otherwise have been.
Various Artists
3/5
Really?
A musical soundtrack without the musical? A film soundtrack without the film?
Sure, I love Rocky Horror, but this is a bit of a loose interpretation of "album".
Listening to it - yes. It is just a disappointment. I'd rather be at a show, dressed in a basque and stockings. I say this as someone who has less than zero interest in live music performances.
Hell, I'd rather be watching the film. At least that would provide some structure around what otherwise is a very bad example of a concept album. I say this because things that work really well on-screen just seem forced, disjointedly, into the audio-only album version. Like Columbia and Magenta's interjections of "more, more, more" and "down, down, down" during 'touch-a touch-a touch me' make sense in the film - but absolutely do not without the visual clue that they're witnessing, but not involved in, what's happening between Janet and Rocky. Without the cues from the visuals - it's just bizarre.
I appreciate that RHS and RHPS are great examples of musicals. This is a different art form though, and it is not a great example of an album.
I'm reluctantly going to give this a 3 rather than a deserved 2, simply because I know the material well enough to sidestep the problems of the format and medium.
Jellyfish
5/5
So very similar to stuff before and after.
It's decent, very listenable and I'm glad to have heard it. Going to give this a bit of a boost because it seems like far too long since I've had a five star album.
Denzel Curry
2/5
The beats in this are monotonous. The flows in this are monotonous.
Sure - the flow is where we should be looking to in this, because the samples are pedestrian. While monotonous, the flows are indeed competent. Shit on me, though, it's dull. Is there any hint of fun in this? No. Is there any hint of anger in this? No. Is there any hint of love in this? No. It seems almost entirely devoid of personality. What, exactly, is it that I'm supposed to be hearing, other than a snarky, detached commentary on modern America?
OK, so it does get a bit better towards the end - Zatoichi is actually pretty good - but it's not enough to rescue it.
Rodríguez
5/5
This is from 1970?
Wow.
The music is a brilliant mix of psych, rock and a little bit of prog. A lot put me stylistically in mind of The Who.
The lyrics. Wow, are you sure this is 1970?
Great choice, had never heard his music before. I had vaguely heard of the film, but not seen it. I liked this album though.
Nic Jones
4/5
I am so very far from being into folk, and I firmly believe that all accordions should be kicked to bits, but despite this, I actually appreciated this album. I won't go as far as to say I liked it, but I did appreciate the skill and the artistry of it, accordions excepted.
Zamilska
4/5
This is dark, I like it. But occasionally a touch repetitive, but definitely worth a listen.
3/5
This was alright. Dangerously close (albeit in a metally kind of way) to shoegaze for my liking, but meh.
Pink Floyd
1/5
While I really enjoy a lot of Pink Floyd, and while I know that the audio engineering of a Pink Floyd concert was the absolute pinnacle of what was possible at the time - I have absolutely zero interest in hearing a live performance.
And this isn't a live performance. It's two and a half mother fucking hours of live concert excerpts.
Any live album will start off at 1 star, on general principle, and it has to be exceptional to increase from that. This does get a boost from being at the very cutting edge of what's possible from a live concert.
But. It gets dings for being two and a half goddamn hours. And for including crowd noise. And for breaking up the structure of some of their albums. And it absolutely gets dings for being music from albums that are included within the main list. This isn't just a waste of an album suggestion, it's a vaguely insulting waste of time. To present worse versions of music we've already listened to for the project - seriously? Of all the artists in this world, of all the music you could introduce to people who've spent three plus years listening to music, presumably for the love of music, you chose worse versions of stuff we've already heard? Two and a half hours of it?
Yeah, nah. Would you like to have another go?
Shihad
4/5
Decent enough, not sure they'd quite decided what they wanted to be.
Mylène Farmer
5/5
In previous reviews, I have referenced how albums have been ruined by listening to them on the shitbox stereo in my shitbox car.
A few months ago now I finally got around to scrapping that shitbox car, and I am now driving something that has a much better stereo. More importantly, the car itself is a hilariously impractical, but nonetheless quite fun to drive French ragtop with a turbocharged petrol engine. Listening to French music in a French car while hooning about in the rain on an otherwise miserable December evening was actually enormous fun. I'm not entirely sure that "fun" quite fits in with the thematic direction of this album, which chases after more introspective and vulnerable motifs, but I genuinely did enjoy the experience of hearing this album for the first time.
A few of the reviews here have drawn comparisons to Madonna, and well yeah. Je t'aime mélancolie especially compares,with Vogue's housey piano sound, but I'd speculate that Boutonnat (Farmer's composer and producer) had at least some exposure to the likes of Grace Jones before putting this album together. L'autre also has the theatricality of Trevor Horn, and I'm here for it. I will definitely listen to this again - it might even enter rotation - and I'll look out for more stuff by Farmer, only really having come across her (so to speak) with Libertine.
Good selection, good album. Here. Have five stars.
Michael Hurley
3/5
Very much a mixed bag for me. Some I really enjoyed. Some mid. Some that made me want to skip.
I did especially enjoy his version of the standard "ragg mop".
Snarky Puppy
4/5
As always, live albums start with the lowest possible score.
This isn't properly a live album though. It is curated tracks from several different live performances, allowing some leeway on the performances. This almost gets it a redemption point. So call it a half.
It is also only tops and tails each set with audience noise. Naturally it would be better if there was none, but at least it's a considerate audience and they don't whoop, shout or do anything other than just clap appreciatively. It's not great, but separated from the stuff I actually want to hear is also worth a half point.
The "collective" are pretty good. The music is pretty decent, and they play well. Couple of points for that.
They do get a half mark dinged because there's some showboating there. Overall I think we're at 3½. I don't do halfs so let's call it 4.
The Upsetters
5/5
Absolutely exceptional. Should be in the main list. Standout track - Rastaman Shuffle.
Cat System Corp.
1/5
It's not a good sign when one has to resort to YouTube to hear something.
It rather suggests that the original work has been created by some insufferable art ponce who disagrees with the concept of having their work listened to, or was suggested by some insufferable art ponce who is reveling in having selected something that nobody has (or indeed could have) heard.
The fact that this has been strung together by a Dutch guy using Google Translate to get himself a Japanese name is hilarious to me. Tell me, my guy who was twelve when these events happened, what was your ICQ name? Or did you go straight into MSN Messenger? What persuaded you to believe that late summer/early autumn 2001 was best represented in the public consciousness by slowed down muzak? Tell me, my guy. I'd love to know.
In the defence of Jornt Elzinga...
Before 11 September 2001, the Western world was pretty damn good. Sure, the USA was being run by someone we truly believed at the time was the worst president there could possibly be. "Dubya" was stupid in a way that few of us englightened, globalist, hopeful and optimistic people could acknowledge, let alone accept. Despite this, the world was filled with burgeoning promise. It was the first time in history that a 12 year old Dutch kid could happily look up Japanese stuff online. It was ridiculously easy for a kid almost anywhere in the first or second worlds (thank you, cold war terminology - your influence is still felt) to hop online and form genuine friendships with people they likely would never meet, and that was absolutely beautiful. Yes, musak existed, and sure, American media was filled with cornball advertising and bright, happy presenters. But these were almost enablers of globalisation. People wanted to see what else there was, and people were. In droves. Online.
Offline, we had the tail ends of Balearic house, we had the beginnings of hip-hop's fourth era. Nu-metal was lurking, but we try and forget that. Cinema had just about peaked, but the Golden Age of Television was yet to start. Reality TV was taking off in a big way. The world was new and fresh and nobody had anything to worry about.
It's just a shame that we (as the Global West) forgot that other people existed too. That was our failing, and the comfortable banality of life was our folly.
Musically, this album is the sort of thing you might have had played down the phone at you while you were on hold to the RAC or somesuch. Not all of it is terrible, but it sure as shit isn't written (or performed) by the insufferable art ponce that sampled it all. The fact it has been slowed down, dirtied up and made kind of low-fi does not constitute a solid contribution to the world of music. Perhaps an EP would have been OK to convey the idea, but 1h11m of this is the absolute pinnacle of art poncery, made doubly so by the fact the message has to be explained.
I managed 19 minutes of it. I sincerely doubt that the remaining 52 minutes can possibly have anything extra to add to that miserable experience, so it's a clear DNF for me, and a one-star rating for good measure.
Swans
3/5
Well.
One needs a lot of stamina to take this on. It's over two hours long, but that doesn't really mark out the endurance requirement - that's really due to the fact a lot of tracks in this album are stuck-in-the-groove repetitive. A lot of them are actively unpleasant to listen to.
But that isn't all this is. The stuff that isn't awful is pretty endearing, and I even enjoyed a lot of it. There is precisely zero danger of me listening to this again, but I feel that if it was cut down to about 45 minutes, there's actually enough for a pretty good album in here.
Brand New
3/5
I listened to this a while ago now, and while I remember it being OK verging on good, I'd struggle to come up with a reason to come back and listen to it again.
Warren Zevon
4/5
Some good tracks in here, some unpleasant lyrics.
Obviously knew Werewolves of London previously, and it is a good track. But Nighttime in the Switching Yard is the best on the album.
Courtney Barnett
5/5
I thoroughly enjoyed this. I'm pretty sure I'd heard a few tracks before, at various points. Very much appreciated the Australianness of her vocal delivery. I'm not saying that she's singing in pure Strine or anything, but she's as unmistakably Australian as a rotary clothesline.
The pace of this is pleasing. It's not riot grrrrrl, but there's definitely hints of it. It's certainly not pure-play indie.
Good selection, I appreciate.
The Stooges
1/5
As with every live album, this is going to start at the lowest possible rating. A live album needs several things to elevate that score.
It needs to be well mic'd and recorded, with clear vocals and instrumentals.
It needs to be free of audience noise, or at least the crowd should be at most a top and tails to the music.
The performance must be exceptional. Sure, everyone drops a note occasionally, or misses a cue. That's OK. Ad libs, being off-key for a whole track or more, rough vocals - not OK.
Showboating is not OK. Even when in an actual show, the artist really needs to understand that showboating is something that should be avoided, because mainly it makes you look like a twat.
Unfortunately, this album fails on absolutely every level. It sounds like it was recorded on a portable cassette recorder (actually a reel-to-reel) and by that, I mean it sounds awful. Mr Pop's voice is flat out bad.
He showboats like a motherfucker. Goading the crowd in a way that is utterly meaningless to anyone who wasn't there. There is audience noise, there is audience interaction. This may well have been a sought-after recording - but it is objectively not a good recording. I don't even want to finish it, let alone give it any points.
The Stooges are better than this. Iggy Pop is better than this. This is clearly one of those quirks of history when something inexplicably becomes popular, despite having no discernable merit. I'm kind of glad it has its place in history, but in history is where it should firmly stay.
Childish Gambino
3/5
This is a difficult one for me to rate. I like the production of it. Some of the flows are pretty good. Asides from a couple of tracks though, I just don't get it. It leaves me cold and uninterested - old and no longer relevant.
Yeah, I know I'm middle aged, but I'm only a few years older than Glover so that doesn't really explain it. Don't get me wrong - there are a couple of tracks on this album that I very much enjoyed - sweatpants being one that sticks out - but I think that I need to accept that I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what it is seems weird and scary to me.
It'll happen to you!
Kenny Wayne Shepherd
3/5
If this is blues it might be OK. But with a name like "Kenny Wayne Shepherd" there's a danger that this might actually be country, and that would be very bad...
Thankfully - it is blues. From real bluesmen. Which is nice. Unfortunately, it's also live - and as we've established, any live album will start proceedings at the lowest possible rating.
It is fairly well recorded, and thankfully there is little audience noise discernible in the early tracks. Asides from a few "woos" the audience noise doesn't really come in until the end of "the thrill is gone (with B.B. King)" - and that also commits the cardinal sin of soliciting the audience for participation. "You can do better than that" - I'm sure they can, but I'm not going to applaud in my own fucking house am I? We do not need such guff on an album recording.
As we carry on, it becomes clearer that the production isn't actually quite as good as it first appeared. Basslines sound muddy. Fiddles sound scratchy - and that's absolutely as you'd want it to be from blues recorded 50+ years ago. This was 2007 for crying out loud, buy some decent mics!
I do have to love the idea of getting a whole stack of genuine greats together to capture something from them. It's a lovely way to nod to the past.
Overall, from our "live album" default score, it gets points for being a good idea. It gets a couple for having such a treasure trove of musicians, and for the coordinator to graciously let those treasures have the spotlight. As an exercise and a piece, I think it's grand. As an album, it is not. I'd prefer to hear better-produced, studio-recorded stuff.
Pop Will Eat Itself
5/5
One thing that you absolutely must bear in mind when listening to this is that Clint Mansell went on to score the movie Requiem For a Dream.
One could argue that his film scoring has become way more widely known that PWEI was - but that is probably doing a disservice to PWEI. The interplay between these guys and, for example, the Stone Roses is quite obvious - and naturally PWEI were doing lots of similar things to the KLF though notably less ostentatiously. They may not be the sole inventor of genre-mixing mashup rock, but they very much acted like the second row in a rugby scrum. Perhaps not glamorous, but definitely valuable.
What is quite surprising though is their influence on other, less immediately similar work. For example, with The Prodigy on Their Law, which very much helped develop a more industrial sound. It could also be argued that this album helped to shape Trent Reznor's style, Trent signing them to the Nothing Records label in 1994, citing his love of this album as a reason to. PWEI toured with NIN through the mid-90s, and that's a clear indication that maybe they weren't "just" a late-80s flashfire of sample-heavy pop-rock.
Yeah, PWEI held open a lot of doors for a lot of people, and I've got to say I can see why. Def Con One is an absolutely iconic record, as is Can You Dig It?
This definitely has a place in my musical history, as an adjacent. I never really got into them in the 90s, but I can see how they absolutely weaved their magic through UK and American music and I reckon this probably should have been in the main list.
DARKSIDE
5/5
Hey, I quite like this. It's a bit like Kerala Dust but maybe not quite as refined. Reading up- looks like this preceded Kerala Dust by a few years. Tracks. I like it.
Angelo De Augustine
1/5
Oh this is intolerable bullshit.
Kashmir
3/5
This was OK. Some tracks I quite enjoyed, a few that were merely alright. Better than I was expecting it to be given when it was released.
Depeche Mode
5/5
This is absolutely one of the game-changing albums - though definitely not without precedent. The influence of krautrock is obvious, but whereas krautrock is often darker and more brooding (as, ironically, Depeche Mode would become post-Clarke) this is very much playful and fun.
Synth music had been fun previously. Popcorn is a fairly obvious early example, but Robin Scott, Sparks and Trevor Horn all need mentions, but mostly synths hadn't been used got fun, poppy stuff. Speak & Spell very much shifted the direction towards a fun, unashamedly poppy sound, opening up This, I ascribe heavily to Clarke, who's later projects - Yazoo and Erasure in particular - went to this far more than Depeche Mode did with their later works.
While this absolutely does sound twee in places, it's a lovely, poppy release. It's almost impossible to not love "Just can't get enough".
I know that the main list might be overserviced for Depeche Mode, but I'd take this over Music for the Masses any day.
Medeski, Martin & Wood
5/5
I have absolutely no idea what to expect from this, never having heard of the album or the artist(s). When I put on track one - well, it sure is a Hammond-tastic surprise!
It continues treading a delicate balance - it could easily be construed as some kind of Patrick and Eugene style pastiche, all knowing winks and everyone's in on the joke - but there's enough behind this to make me feel like it very much isn't that. It sounds funky, jazzy - and obviously Hammondy. It's a fine addition and I'm glad to have had it introduced to me.
Deafheaven
1/5
An absolute DNF. It's a chore for one or two tracks. Fifty nine minutes of it means that I'll invite deafhaven to park themselves squarely on the waiting list for a group therapy session.
Daft Punk
4/5
I kinda wasn't looking forward to this, having not seen the film can often lead to a disappointment when it comes to film scores. However, asides from a few obvious set-piece bits which are clearly designed to compliment what we see on screen, this is mostly pretty decent electronic ambience
I'll have to admit that at a breath under an hour and a half, it is too long. I did find myself a various points asking "has this not finished yet?" and, had I not been on a 200 mile drive, probably would have DNFd it.
What actually happened though is that that it did finish, and Tidal carried me out to a Teddybears remix of Adagio for Tron, which is honestly a way more interesting piece of music than most of the stuff that's on the soundtrack, and I'm glad of that.
As background music, or presumably as a film score, where you're not expected to be actively listening to this - it's decent enough. As an active listening album, it's not quite so good.
Vince Guaraldi Trio
5/5
As far as Christmas music goes, this is actually quite tolerable, with the notable exception of when you get children singing.
As jazz, it's pretty nice. The sort of thing you could get away with playing to people who hate jazz but say they want Christmas music, just as well as you could play it to people who say they hate Christmas music but want some jazz.
Charles Aznavour
5/5
This makes me question whether the French got there first.
I'm perfectly prepared to believe that they did. Superb, crooning gallic perfection.
The Mountain Goats
1/5
I was listening to this sad millennial white boy music and paused briefly to investigate what my cat was meowing about.
She just wanted a tickle under her chin - something readily available from me, and gratefully provided - but after fussing the murderous little beast I sat down again, absently neglecting to resume the music.
After a good few minutes, I remembered that I had been listening to an album, but I found that I actually preferred the silence of not playing it.
That should probably say everything that can be said about how I feel about this. It's a DNF and instead I'm going to play some William Onyeabor.
Wilco
1/5
This started out being what I'd describe as an utterly standard poppy alt. It then became a little bit like bad Cake. You know, where Cake have that unfortunate country edge. By "That's not the issue" it's become properly rootin-tootin' yeehaw country. And that's not OK.
In defence of That's not the issue, the following track (It's just that simple) is physically painful. That steel guitar sound causes actual discomfort.
Beyond that - the only adjective I can come up with is "tepid".
Auri
2/5
Based on the cover alone - this is a vocal metal album isn't it?
No.
It's progressive folk, which is like vocal metal but slower.
It is, upon listening to it, the most solidly "Two" album I've heard in over 1,500 attempts.
Beyoncé
3/5
Heresy to admit - but I am not a Beyoncéist. I am aware that she's loved by many, but I've never been able to buy into what she's selling - she's just never been able to sucker me in.
This is better than anything I've heard previously from her, but I'm informed that her next album is - ew - country, so I doubt I'll hear anything as good after this.
Powderfinger
4/5
Competent rock from a band I've never heard, or heard of.
I enjoy this little venture for its ability to introduce me to new artists and music. I'm not unhappy about having a listen to this. Solid, respectable 4.
Gerry Cinnamon
4/5
This is so Scottish that after it had finished playing, Tidal sent me directly to The Proclaimers.
If anyone makes a "no true Scotsman" argument, you can point them to Gerry Cinnamon and this album, as surely if you tattooed the St Andrews cross onto Rob Roy's bawbag, it still wouldn't be as Scottish as this. That being the case - I rather quite enjoyed it, in the way that all Englishmen appreciate Scotsmen doing Scottish things. Caber tossing, deep-frying everything, pretending that their clan had a tartan etc etc. It's lovely to see, and lovely to listen to. I approve.
Billy Strings
3/5
This sits closer to the bluegrass than I'd recognise (and despise) as country music. As a consequence, most of this album has not made me want to commit atrocities.
Gild the Lily came very close, with that resonator sounding uncomfortably close to a steel guitar.
It's an interesting question. Most sources online suggest that bluegrass is a subgenre of country, but I'm not sure I could agree with that, because bluegrass specifically isn't usually the musical equivalent of papercuts between the thumb and forefinger. From what I've read, both styles have been brought up from similar root stems, with some cross-pollenation. However it has happened, I'm glad that I've not been put into a DNF state, despite being an album that should be half an hour shorter.
Skipping some of the most obnoxiously "country"-sounding ones (like the 4am one) helped.
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore
5/5
Only listened to the first two tracks so far, while taking (very) short stroll to the shops and back. I suspect that I'll very much enjoy the rest of this cool, laid back jazz very much, so it'll get a preemptive top score.
Nice. Smooth. Great. 👌
Operation Ivy
5/5
It might be tempting to downvote this as not being an album, but rather two albums mashed together with a couple of extra tracks thrown in for good measure, but given as the whole affairs clocks in comfortably under an hour I'm prepared to look the other way when considering the scoring.
On the subject of the music - I'd heard a few of theses tracks as cover versions. I dare say the originals are better, because this compilation is The Tits.
It's got more traditional punk energy than you might expect from a late-ish 80s California ska-punk, but then they don't skip on the ska either, or the occasional bit of rock and roll for that matter.
I really wish I'd heard these guys before. Absolutely they will have heavily influenced some of my favourite 90s ska-punk, skate-punk and even psychobilly acts. They do so seemingly effortlessly, with simple but compelling drumming, awesome lead guitars and some nice two-toney basslines topped off with superb, unpolished but accomplished vocals.
Cracking stuff. 👌
Digable Planets
4/5
I seem to remember enjoying this.
Imogen Heap
5/5
I'll freely admit that this almost entirely washed over me. Unassuming background music to listen to while doing something else. That is until Heap's love letter to Laurie Anderson's O Superman.
I'm pretty sure I've heard it before - no idea where but it sure has been a while. It was enough to switch me from passive to active listening, and I'm glad of it. I might have to go back and re-listen to the first few tracks more intently
August is Falling
3/5
If you ever think to yourself "you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover", you can confidently reassure yourself that judging this EP by it's cover is entirely acceptable. Indeed, I'd recommend judging it by the cover over the actual content of the EP.
I've mentioned in previous user-submission reviews that suggesting something that has extremely limited distribution is a bit of a troll move. This isn't an album, and does not appear to be available anywhere but Bandcamp. The wikipedia suggests it was self-produced, self-funded, self-distributed - round about the definition of "extremely limited distribution". So dick move by the submitter, number 1.
It's an EP. Not an LP. Dick move number 2. As far as dick moves by the submitter go, at least the dick in question is small and inoffensive this time.
Dick move number 3 is that this appears to be some kind of emo "meta-comedy" - the cover that you should judge this by is some ridiculously MS-paint thrown together artwork that does - irritatingly - capture the absurdity of the emo movement, 15-plus years after emo. Bravo. In this one bullet point, the dick's movement is back and forth in a gentle, yet compelling manner.
As for the music - it's OK. Genuinely OK. Again, it's meta-comedy, using the absurdity of emo to highlight the absurdity of emo. It's not as irritatingly perfect as the "album" (boo, hiss! EP!) art, but it's OK.
Ornatos Violeta
3/5
A bit more varied than the first couple of tracks implied. I can see why the band split up, as I can't imagine that trying to agree on what was included would have been any fun at all.
The Housemartins
4/5
This more than many albums from the list makes me feel old. Forty years, just about, since this came out.
It was never in regular rotation for me when I was in my teenage years - The Beautiful South had come about and there's enough crossover in styles for me to have had that itch scratched.. But Happy Hour is a hell of an album opening.
The religion is a bit too overt in this album to go unmentioned.
Good album. Worth listening to.
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci
5/5
I love this album.
I loved Gorky's Zygitic Mynci when I first heard Patio Song back in the 90s. Despite being half Welsh I don't understand a word of the language (don't get me wrong, there are hundreds of thousands of Welsh people living in Wales who don't either) but as with so many recordings in languages other than English, the lyrics are less important than the timbre, timing, lilt and cadence of the singer's voice, and Euros Childs' voice does a grand job.
There's an actual loveliness to this record, and I'm glad I've listened to it again.
Psyche Origami
5/5
Yep - very competent hip-hop that defies early 2000s awfulness by being pretty dang good.
Queen
5/5
Genuinely can't believe that this wasn't in the main list, but as has been pointed out by others here, it is somewhat interchangeable with A Night at the Opera. What this album does represent, though, past ANATO is the production - ADATR is just better produced, and the difference isn't negligible either.
Crass
5/5
I really rather enjoyed this. Angry punk that actually manages to have some cracking good drumming, basslines and melodies. Yes, the edgelordgy spoken-word lyrics are oh-so edgelordy, but it's 70s punk. It probably would have been actually quite risky at the time. Definitely worth a listen, because it's in no way as easy or accessible as some of the other punk stuff in the list.
Glass Animals
3/5
It took three attempts to listen to this album. The first couple of goes were interrupted by me falling into a very deep sleep. The third - well, I didn't object to it, mostly. The chipmunk-style vocals are not OK though. There isn't a single use-case for them that improves a song.
Turnstile
5/5
On the second pass, I enjoyed this much more. I can't help but think of A while listening though. Harder than A, and with quite a few diversions and interludes. Vocals also remind me quite a bit of Jane's Addiction.
Zero 7
5/5
I've got to say that on balance I prefer Simple Things, but I do also very much appreciate the inclusion of this disc. It isn't trip-hop. It is downtempo, you might even call it chillout, but it isn't trip-hop.
One can point happily to the stellar vocals in this. Really great to hear. If you like this, definitely check out more.
Less Than Jake
5/5
Good enough fun ska punk - it's slightly later than the sound of the mid-late 90s. I feel like this was on the tail end of the ska punk zeitgeist; the bolt had been pretty much shot by the time that this was released. Indeed, I didn't listen to this at the time, so I'm coming to it new nearly 30 years after it was released, and actually 30 years since ska punk was fresh and in the limelight.
I had some fun. You can't take this stuff too seriously, and that's just great. Not every record has to mean something, and I'd have a dozen of these over yet another morose motherfucker singing with their eyes shut, droning on about the torment in their poor pathetic souls. Captures the passing of a moment quite well.
Screeching Weasel
5/5
What a cracking little punk album.
Standout track - Fathead.
One of the things that always gives a subtle influence on how I'm rating an album is the quality of the recommendation Tidal gives me next. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's just right. And it's never a simple story about whether the subsequent recommendation will influence me up or down, but up after this was a significantly worse track and it highlighted exactly how much fun the album was. Half an hour of fast-past punk enjoyment. Hurrah!
Getatchew Mekurya
3/5
Occasionally interesting, too often live. I preferred the jazzy instrumentation to the vocal.
Porcupine Tree
2/5
Edgy prog.. Great.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
3/5
Artist name rang a bell - turns out they already had an entry in the main list. I have to say, this is a better album. Less juvenile. Most obvious thing to say is that they'd obviously heard Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" before recording Snake Bite, because the guitar sting is really rather similar, isn't it?
Yeah - better than the main entry in the list, but not something I'll ever go back to.
Jawbreaker
4/5
Is this from 1996?
It sounds like a fresh-opened American tin of 1996.
Oh wow, released September 1995. These guys were ahead of their time!
Current 93
1/5
This does not appear to be available on Tidal, which I can only asume is due to common courtesy. This album is bullshit.
I genuinely had no idea that something as bad as The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by The Incredible String Band could be found, but here the submitter has found something. Spoken poetry over droning noises, the sound of children playing, some actually very pleasant guitar occasionally, just to show you that the gentleman is entirely capable of playing the bagpipes, but isn't refraining from doing so - this album has the ponce playbook memorised.
We can all point to incredible artists who've suffered for their art. David Tibet has taken a slight variation on this and decided that he's going to make everybody else suffer for his art.
I wish I could award negative points for this, because I've spent an hour of a Sunday morning enduring this wankfest of a tripe soufflé. Do yourself a favour and skip it.
Yello
5/5
Aww man, Yello.
They were unfairly treated through the 90s and 00s, people associated them only with "Oh Yeah" and its almost painful ties to the 1980s. But we have thankfully started to realise that these Yello guys are actually really rather talented.
Behind the scenes is also quite fascinating. With independent wealth (and oh lordy, there's a lot of wealth) Yello could easily afford to experiment. Hells, if the record company tried to interfere, Deiter could just buy the label. That kind of thing allows risks to be entirely less risky. The result is something that was so unique that it tied itself to a time. There's not a huge number of artists in the world who've been able to do that.
Yes. Definitely a worthy inclusion and honestly, Yello should have been in the main list.
STARSET
1/5
This is atrocious, the sort of thing I'd expect to hear as a royalty-free track under the label "epic". Does everything it ever does in the first thirty seconds of the first track.
Agalloch
4/5
Aaaaaag-a-loch-loch-loch, push pineapple shake a tree!
Hamilton Leithauser
4/5
Dude sounds like Rod Stewart.
The Vampire Weekend vibe to this is pretty dang strong. That's no bad thing.
Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
1/5
An hour and a quarter of live album is not OK. The audience are audible. That's not OK.
It's noodly and all over the place. Overindulgent.
Wet Leg
5/5
This really is a jolly good album.
Shpongle
5/5
Can get behind this.
I actually discovered Shpongle as a follow-on from Androcell's Efflorescense - which, if you like this, you might also like. Psybient is a pretty niche genre, I think we can all agree on that. What that niche allows is for some interesting opportunities to play with stuff that producers and engineers don't often get to play around with. Stereo, for example.
One of those hilarious things you'll hear about from audiophile ponces as they chunter on involves words like "soundstage" and "imaging". Often, they'll explain how their £2,000+ amplifier and their £3,000 speakers will let them close their eyes and hear exactly where the guitarist is standing in relation to the drummer, and they'll froth at the gusset about how incredibly perfectly they can hear where the keyboard player was sat.
Now, I'll tell you this for nowt.
They're talking complete and utter codswallop. Stereo balancing happens in the mixing desk, and "where" each separately mic'd instrument appears is entirely the whim of the producer. Back in the sixties, when stereo was very new, some cuttings were hilariously overexaggerated, with the vocals being almost entirely on one channel and instrumentals on the other - again a choice of the producer and how far round any particular dial or slider was wound.
Anyway - as a man with a very capable hifi system - one thing I should observe about Are You Shpongled is that Posford and Ram have put significant effort into how the soundscape and imaging can be perceived. There is beauty in the way they have slid the sliders and twiddled the knobs, because synths will meander left and right, hither and yon. It is not unusual in this recording for a vocal to float, etherially, behind your left ear. It is intentional and has precisely bot all to do with where in the studio Ram was sat.
I definitely think that as a niche genre, this does deserve a listen. As a worthy entry regardless of genre, definitely that too. The production of it is remarkable and pushes boundaries of how music, acoustics and psychoacoustics intermingle to create experience.
That should probably be held separately to whether you like it or not.
In my case, it definitely helps that I like it.
Muse
4/5
"My plug-in baby supervised my elephant, I'm so hard of hearing"
I had considered leaving that as my entire review, but I don't feel I can. My storytelling itch needs to be scratched. You see, back in the late 90s, early 2000s I used to occasionally visit my father while he directed (or occasionally performed in) shows at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton.
One evening, I'd assiduously avoided going to see whatever it was that was on (because who would want to see a G&S Opretta?) but of course I still crashed the cast party in the Pavilion bar after the show. Either a nepotistic benefit of the Old Man directing, or, more likely, a very bored bouncer who couldn't care enough to tell me I wasn't allowed in. Anyway, I remember talking to some incredibly beautiful young lady who was somehow involved in events there. Tall, slender, with dark hair and dark eye, I could easily imagine her at Slimelight, clutching a Snakebite and Black as Sisters of Mercy played on the soundsystem. Anyway, this lass was indulgent in her conversation, and let me know that she positively melted at he sound of a tenor voice. To my clueless, youthful self, this was interpreted as an invitation to talk about tenor singers and Matt Bellamy, at the time, was one of very few of that range, and conversation came around to Muse. This possibly wasn't quite where she was trying to steer the conversation, but she continued to indulge me while I hopelessly chuntered on about this band, and probably this album.
Then, Muse actually were quite new and different, putting a slightly harder edge in pop music, but more significantly, moving performance away from a more jovial, festivally, giggy style towards stadium theatrics. Muse did it better than their immediate peers, but they didn't half disappear up their own arseholes.
I remain as clueless to advances now as I was then.
Magdalena Bay
4/5
Perfectly peachy pop. Pleasant, perhaps placed prematurely. Presuming proper promotion (plus positive press) posterity is probably promising.