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Fri Mar 11 2022
L.A. Woman
The Doors
I'm not a huge door's fan. I feel their psych rock up Jim Morrison's asshole is overwrought and oversold. However, the first half of this album slaps. The funky James Brown inspired groove on the opener had me rethinking my whole outlook. Ray Manzarek's Hammond work is rad. Then the second half of the album hits, and this becomes a solid 50% for me. I know the classics are on this, and it's Morrison's final album, but on a one-time listen, I'd give it 3 stars. With repeated listens, the second half may grow on me.
3
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Mon Mar 14 2022
Fragile
Yes
Rating system (Most of these albums are shoo-in 5-star albums for anyone “into” the genre they represent, my system is trying to avoid all 5-star reviews and break them down to represent my tastes. This is subjective and supposed to be fun, and some of these are snap judgements/hot takes after listening to an album once.):
* Why is this even on here/DNF
** Album with artistic merit, but not my jam. Will probably not listen to again without prompting.
***Solid album, would listen to again. Some significant flaws for me to fully enjoy as a “full album.” Most albums will be in this category, as it’s the legit average.
****Almost flawless album, only one misstep in tracklisting or small engineering quibbles.
*****Flawless album, one of my favorites, owning is required.
This was an album my parents had when I was a wee tot and was always put off by only because of the cover. It looked hard and complicated, and of course, I was not wrong (especially for a 6-year-old). I have of course heard “Roundabout” in the album edit, but most of the rest of the tracks skipped my notice, because I didn’t really get into prog and jazz until my 20s. It’s hard to unpack everything that is going on in this in one listen, but the Moog work and all the solos are delightful. The vaguely sci-fi beats and the reworking of romantic era music, as well as hints of blues (in the intro to Heart of the Sunrise) and baroque power pop (pretty much the whole bridge of America, my favorite Simon & Garfunkel song) make this such a fun listen. I don’t have as much fondness for this as for some Genesis and King Crimson works but will deepen and grow over time.
3
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Tue Mar 15 2022
Morrison Hotel
The Doors
Rating system (Most of these albums are shoo-in 5-star albums for anyone “into” the genre they represent, my system is trying to avoid all 5-star reviews and break them down to represent my tastes. This is subjective and supposed to be fun, and some of these are snap judgements/hot takes after listening to an album once.):
* Why is this even on here/DNF
** Album with artistic merit, but not my jam. Will probably not listen to again without prompting.
***Solid album, would listen to again. Some significant flaws for me to fully enjoy as a “full album.” Most albums will be in this category, as it’s the legit average.
****Almost flawless album, only one misstep in tracklisting or small engineering quibbles.
*****Flawless album, one of my favorites, owning is required.
Day 3: Third day, and two Doors albums in those 3 days, sigh. Already mentioned my general apathy towards Morrison & co, but here it goes. This album is fine. It’s not filled with as many highs and lows as LA Woman, with a few standouts (the classic Roadhouse Blues opener and the openly Donovan-inspired Peace Frog are two that I really enjoyed). But, I posit this is a better album qua album than its follow-up because it’s snappy, and keeps to its ideas a lot more succinctly than LA Woman. Sure, it’s still doing a lot, the boards run from Hammond to electric piano to pipe organ, but it’s not getting lost in everything that it does. I’m not someone who hates noodling, but I do love a good dirty blues riff, and this delivers on that promise too. Morrison is his dark, brooding, “enigmatic” self, and it works here. He’s developing the sound that he uses in LA Woman, but it feels fresher and more intentional (than drug induced, though it’s likely that as well).
3
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Wed Mar 16 2022
In Utero
Nirvana
Rating system (Most of these albums are shoo-in 5-star albums for anyone “into” the genre they represent, my system is trying to avoid all 5-star reviews and break them down to represent my tastes. This is subjective and supposed to be fun, and some of these are snap judgements/hot takes after listening to an album once.):
* Why is this even on here/DNF
** Album with artistic merit, but not my jam. Will probably not listen to again without prompting.
***Solid album, would listen to again. Some significant flaws for me to fully enjoy as a “full album.” Most albums will be in this category, as it’s the legit average.
****Almost flawless album, only one misstep in tracklisting or small engineering quibbles.
*****Flawless album, one of my favorites, owning is required.
Day 4: It’s been a minute since listening to something so unabashedly alienating. So much has been said about this album (and frankly, most of the stuff on this list) but it’s true that this gains so much more relevance in light of everything that happened after its release. Without the unaliving of Cobain, this would have been seen in a larger body of work as perhaps growing pains, or a third album “sophomore slump”. I know it’s more similar to their earlier/live work, but I can also see how it would be disappointing to someone expecting the relative polish of Nevermind. And I know from experience, since this was released when I was in high school, and folks just didn’t grok it the way they did with the previous album (though that number was not zero, obviously. Perhaps more of the population resonated with it in my HS, as I went to school in a semi-rural PNW town). I like loud and noisy and hard albums, but as I’ve gotten older, have definitely not been putting this kind of stuff on my daily listening rotation. I wasn’t really into this when it came out either, but it was a melancholy reminder of growing up in the ‘90s.
3