1. They're no doubt amazing guys - love their mums, never forget a birthday etc etc.
2. No doubt great live.
3. This is the first 'user generated' album I've listened to and it is not a great listen. Just too much going on all the time. Too long. The sound of everyone huffing and puffing, but not offering a single memorable tune. Sorry Canada.
Catchy melody. Verses that deliver the message. Choruses that deliver a huge melody, sung by massed backing vocals. Lyrics frequently sweary undermining the uplifting chorus mood. Stunning over an individual track, slightly wearying over a whole album. 3.5 starts but rounding down for a lack of variety.
Utterly cynical corporate emo - every single instrument over-produced, every chorus huge, even the enunciation of the vocalist is profoundly irritating. Exactly what a 10-year old would play loud to annoy his parents, who should be instantly moving said 10-year old onto, well though I'm not an emo expert, I can't believe that bands i've never heard like My Chemical Romance, even Linkin Park for gods sake, wouldn't be better than this. In a throwback to Fred Durst times there's even a rap section.
Lyrics really interesting, music rather dull singer-songerwriter with very conventional full band arrangements. I don't feel I was forced to witness this, but was influenced certainly.
Easy to listen to, not easy listening. Always melodic, and some variety in arrangements lift this above average singer-songwriter. But I like mine with a bit of grit in the oyster, and this is all a bit too safe. Some lovely guitar playing, and I got through the entire review without mentioning God once.
Do they have anything to offer other than furious riffing, blast beats and a vocalist shredding his larynx? There's a hint of guitar soloing more out of classic rock but that's about it. Feel that all sorts of post-poodle rock subgenres are way overrepresented in these lists.
There's a lot of variety here - two instrumental themes, the delicate acoustics of Stretchmarker, alongside the rock riffing. So points for not cleaving to a single music template and hammering it to death (like Death, literally the last album before this). But a double album does mean its hard to stay focused, and as I often say about a double 'pick your 12 best songs please' It would a 3 for individual songs, a 2 for length and lack of decisiveness. Is it better than Death, yes it is, so 3 stars it is. A 2.5 really.
Can there have been a worse time to be a vaguely jangly pop band than 1989, when the UK was about to explode with either rave or Madchester or both. Never mind, they sold squillions of records. No-one could escape their singles in the nineties, no matter how hard you raved. Grudgingly they could always write a strong melody and this is perhaps ore interestingly arranged than I might have thought. Song for Whoever's chorus still irritates, so it's a solid but unexciting 3 from me. When is someone going to nominate the first Flowered Up album then?
Not for everyone, hence the 2.94 rating, I do feel that if you've not experienced the on-the-surface calm but surprisingly unsettling under the hood world of seventies UK childrens TV BOC can be difficult to access. Combine the music from this with slowed-down hip-hop beats and slightly detune the whole thing. Also of course flavours of The Wicker Man and other cultish horror movies. NowBOC have become their own cult.
Albums from the user list I already own : 1/12
Albums I have five-starred: 1/12
1960s bob Dylan: I know it's a really long song but it has 43 verses
1970s Yes: I know it's a really long song but it has 4 tempo changes, 8 parts and 3 solos.
1990s ambient: I know it's a really long song but you're either off your face or doing the dishes.
Ethel Cain: these are really long songs. If I could hear the lyrics clearly (hello production) then I'd perhaps understand why, as the musical ideas are pretty much there in the first 2 minutes of each. They can sing, they can write but boy do they need an editor. A 2.5 for me but as it felt like I had been listening to this for several years rounding down. Perhaps we could get a deluxe edition which has less.
If there's a cliche about Irish music it's that whatever genre the music is, it's marked by a romantic sensibility, melodic approaches and a degree of sincerity. Sad to say that despite their best efforts (deadpan drop-dead dry vocals) they absolutely conform to this - check out the coda on The Lotts. This is not a criticism, it makes a very enjoyable album. I started with a 3, then went to 3.5 and now have settled on a 4.
In the mid/late 90s there was a whole genre of music in the UK that emerged out of Ibiza beaches, trip-hop and dance which was 'bar music' - mid tempo stuff that would gently get your foot tapping while not interrupting conversation. Vocals were hushed and the bass was always prominent, as here, along with the flute. This I feel would have fitted right into the compilations of the era, and several review have noted the link to Air, one of the flag-bearers of this type of music. So my foot gently tapped. The arrangements and grooves are not bad, but listen to the first minute of Fugue en Sol Inconnu and tell me it doesn't take you back to cargo pants, Stella Artois and bars with punny names like Bar None or The Cross Bar. 2.5 out of 5 (the Stella Artois score). Rounding down for length, sorry Quebec.
This was one of the first pieces, along with Desert Music, that made me realise Steve Reich was a much more interesting and complex composer than Philip Glass (sorry), who I also like but has a much more limited bag of tricks. Endless metamorphosing, repeating, evolving, stretching out and contracting, it's music about music, but it's just wonderful. I'm thinking it's time to upgrade my 192 kps e-music download from a fifteen years ago.
Albums I have given 5 stars to on this list: 2/12
Albums I already own from this list: 1/12
As many have noted 3 JM albums in total on the two lists is generous. 70s folk-rocky singer-songwriter is not my favourite genre. Add fretless bass and a dry as dust production and no boats are floated here. Hurt in Your Heart is I will admit a great song, Sweet Little Mystery way overplayed at the time, 2.5 really but have to round down. Them's the breaks.
The reviews for this album are both overly harsh and completely fair. While one can find some of the instrumentation interesting on disc one, particularly the proto-krautrock rhythms, it's also barely competent, repetitive and mostly dull. Exactly the kind of music that visual artists on the whole have made, and the kind of visual art musicians make (hello Jack White, Bob Dylan, Ronnie wood etc etc). The first disc is better than the second, but it's a 1.5 vs a 0.5.
Having had Baroness and Death come up, I pigeonholed Protomartyr as another version of death/speed/metal with blast beats and a vocalist who needs to gargle. Completely wrong. As a post-punk UK child growing up in the era of the Bunnymen, Gang of Four, Cure, The Fall, Wah and early Simple Minds this is right up my street. Doleful vocals, throbbing bass lines, scratchy guitars, big dynamics - sounds good to me. As it did to Idles, Fontaines DC, Shame and a bunch of other bands in the UK/Ireland in the 2010s and to this bunch. MES hangs over some of the vocals, but also the super sad random notes of David Thomas of Pere Ubu. My first real discovery of the user list, and one to add to the 'liked albums' list. As one reviewer said, sad when the album's over.
Talking Heads loom ever greater in my estimation. Currently listening to Speaking In Tongues and just - well - marvelling at Burning Down the House. This, like Monaco, Bad Lieutenant, the Other Two, and Electronic, is an inessential side project to a band (New Order) whose core canon is a wonder. Generally one can say that the groove is here in parts (Punk Lolita) but that it can't escape the whiff of studio out-takes with some invited-in vocals over the top. A curio, and ten years too late. 2.5 but respect to whoever used their one vote to put this forward.
Firstly, nobody needs an 18-song (ok 16 plus 2 skits) album lasting 70 minutes. Boy Beethoven's Ninth has a lot to answer for sometimes - the history of recorded music might have been very different if Sony's vice chair had been a Sibelius fan. Anyway, this is such a late 90s/early 00s record. A bit of rap, a female singer, hip-hop beats but guitars and choruses. Not unpleasant at all, but so many bases are covered at such length that the idea of going back seems inessential. Also YET ANOTHER Canadian artist, that's 4/19 now, which seems a little more than were on the list proper. Canadians super diligent to get the 1001 done and their choices on this list. 2.5 but surely rounded down for length, give us your best 12 tracks is advice that is rarely wrong.
Understand a lot of comments about the ineligibility, but it's hardly the Easy Rider or Top Gun soundtracks, but one composer's work. So on that basis happy to consider. And yet, it is a soundtrack, one of the most famous ever for one of the greatest movies ever, even though the first time I saw it I missed the first 10 mins and was well confused for half an hour. So, it's music that needs the visuals to complete it, and thus without the visuals purely as music it only occasionally is complete. Having said all that, still a 4 - take out Just One Kiss and the Love Theme and it's the greatest album Tangerine Dream never made.
Two of the most tremendous live gigs of my life were with this lot. And this is pretty listenable, particularly ambient industrial workout Fiat Lux. Like NIN but German and extra dense. Not speaking German the significance of the lyrics goes over my head. 2.5 really but the excellent cover is surely worth half a star.
Can't believe the original list had room for Finlay Quaye and Fishbone under 'reggae' but not this. Now rectified, and though not quite a five star due to the edition confusion, I listened to the original 1973 version, it's a straight strong 4.
I was completely new to Tool and was hoping for something a bit more, industrial - as the name raised hopes of a Test Dept. But it's post-grunge heavy metal rock, perhaps a bit slower and more varied than some of the others on this list (Death). But it's all to my ears pretty dull stuff.
