More rhythmically interesting than I thought they’d be, great use of sound effects too.
Smart in subtle ways I'd dig into more if they were delivered with some more bombast. I like the sadder ones, hit harder than the dance-y ones. A few tracks too long perhaps, but Flower being relegated to B-Side is a tragedy.
His soft edge on these sorrowful songs I think will sharpen with age, his Unchained Melody rendition is moving.
I prefer Endtroducing…’s beat heavy Space Odyssey and Steinski’s pop culture call-and-response to this sweeping, baroque approach to sampling. Then again, I adore It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back which is pretty dense so maybe I just don’t like the execution here as much (It Takes a Nation brought the NOISE and Since I Left You is more easy listening so there’s that bias too). All that said, this is pretty enjoyable overall, I’m just picky.
I’ve heard this before I got it and thought it was ok. Gonna skip Sympathy and leave it to the end on the advice of a friend. Dear Doctor is funny. The whole thing plods along well, but in the end I just love Sympathy and the rest does relatively little for me.
I respect this record’s innovation more than I enjoy it. ‘The Model’ is the only song that goes anywhere melodically.
Aesthetically metal just is something that interests me from its emphasis on technicality over tune or it’s occult/satanic lyrical themes (boring and unrelatable). I can get a kick out of novelty stuff (Bodycount) or musically undeniable stuff (prime Metallica) but this is neither. They’ve more in common musically with hardcore like Black Flag than power metal, but unfortunately the lyrics are just as dumb as power metal. Look, I don’t buy the existence of satan, and I’m not convinced these guys do either; but they’re more than happy to sell it.
So far sounds like sci-fi bollocks. Enjoying tracks 4-6, great tunes, I too believe love is the greatest thing a human can feel. These guys use silly, obvious metaphors but they’re charming in their earnestness. Hippies gone to the 31st century.
After Hours is chill as hell I love the scratching on it. The few seconds sampling ‘All You Need is Love’ and ‘Sir Duke’ in ‘Luck of Lucien’ and ‘Footprints’ are cheeky and show how more liberated sampling laws were then (they wouldn’t be so lucky with ‘Can I Kick It?’). First 8 tracks are an incredible run, especially ‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo’ where the storytelling reminds me of Paul Revere by the Beastie Boys. 4 of the last 6 tracks lack the presence, earworms and fun of the first 8, enjoyable in the background though with the exception of ‘Ham n Eggs’ which I’d wager influenced DOOM’s ‘Beef Rapp’ if not all of Mm…Food. Description of a Fool packs a great message and groove.
None of these songs reach me like ‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo’ or ‘After Hours’ but none are as compulsively skippable as the three (by my count) bum tracks on their debut. Bass too high in the mix in some songs, let the samples breathe.
God, this shit is boring. One passive listen and nothing has stood out, except maybe the 9 and 8 minute (respectively) intro and outro where my feeling of tedious impatience peaked. I can’t hum one tune or recall one lyric. He tries to imitate Dylan in the way his voice trails off, in Dylan’s case the trailing signified lingering pensive thought, in Vile’s case it signifies an empty stylistic choice coated in self satisfaction. More active second listen now, ‘Suffering’ typifies his style of lyric writing, straightforward depressive to complement his earthy instrumentals delivered with no measurable feeling.
Fantastic Pop, Rock and Soul album rolled into one, effortlessly cool.
I regret to say this record doesn’t reach me. I know it was a relative earthquake compared to the rock of its time, but the benchmark of heavy for me is Live at the Star-Club Hamburg and Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols which this doesn’t touch. I didn’t study physics in secondary school but I do know that Force = Mass x Acceleration, Fun House has the mass, but it doesn’t have the speed to be forceful. ‘1970’ is pretty good though and I have fond memories of catching air listening to it on the Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 soundtrack.
The baroque touches accentuate great tunes, the Randy Newman cover at the end sounds like Dylan at his funniest. There’s a couple of questionable ageist lines on the album but overall fantastical lyrics aesthetically fit well with the music.
Some rough notes on these great songs:
Boddishita - amazing guitars, different styles and great playing and interaction, jazz, surf guitar, rock n roll.
Razor Boy - A lighthearted pun on the grim reaper, love this song’s vocal melody
Boston Rag - reminds me of the tragedy of Boston Legal being cancelled.
Your Gold Teeth - Smooth as hell, love the hook. Keyboard solo around 3 minute mark is choice
Show Biz Kids - Nepo baby hate anthem 🙌🏻
My Old School - Love how the voices come together on the chorus
Pearl of the Quarter - A man very secure in his love, the undulating melody when he says “voulez voulez voulez vous” is delightful
King of the World - ‘I Am Legend’ eat your heart out, great synths.
All in all, has always been my favourite Steely Dan album
Al Green’s voice is incredibly sexual and whimpering at once. He savours and laments love so convincingly from line to line you’d swear the rise and fall of his rasp match the convulsions of your heart at the turns of your own love life. Leading with the classic title track, on this album he doesn’t reach the screeching muscularity of ‘Al Green Gets Next to You’ the year previous or the immaculate perfection of ‘I’m Still in Love With You’ 9 months later but he nevertheless unleashes an enjoyable set for the heartstrings of the masses.
Great record, it’s Christmas Day I’m not gonna write notes. P.S. if this is completely random, what a coincidence I got this album today!
When I saw the cover of this album I thought it’d be fucking terrible. In reality, this is the kind of white boi meta soul Father John Misty thinks he’s making: genuinely vulnerable, self-aware and funny.
Historical inflection point where one of the greatest post-Beatles rock figure out how to shape their incredible sound into bonafide songs, decent, but meandering ones (they’d get better after).
Goo sounds like the OG great sellout record to me, then here they proved they could still sellout without compromising their noisy proclivities, Dirty is my favourite SY record and one of my favourite albums to play in the car.
White man with acoustic guitar bullshit I never go for, lyrics not esoteric or complex enough to even pretend to be deep, just straightforward not my thing bit too jammy too, better than his son.
James Brown and Stevie Wonder were put on this Earth for a reason; this was not the reason.
They write great riffs and earwormy hooks on first passive listen I have to listen again to assess the content. Second listen: Pretty Green is a simple but catchy observation of currency being the incentive upon which people do anything productive in society. Monday is a cute song about workplace infatuation I assume, these guys haven’t got into specifics on the first two cuts so far. Set the House Ablaze the riff sounds like the first part of the Helicopter riff by Bloc Party. Start! has a great riff, good message too I’m sure I’ve heard it plenty of times before. That’s Entertainment is a great song that is the exception for the lyrics, scrapping ideas/narratives for details on passing moments in life make the verses universal and sentimental. Dream Time is very good too, these guys are at their best when they’re more abstract lyrically cause their ideas about life aren’t profound.
Serviceable background music, and most of it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, but overall the content is pretty thin save a couple of tracks, the last two songs kinda suck (including one Neil Young wrote!?), listen to Young’s solo albums instead.
Preachy towards the end but most of what comes before is very good. Details of corporal punishment are a sharp condemnation of uk state schools. Great guitar work all over the album. Great lyrics overall.
This is my third Sonic Youth album and I haven’t even gotten 30 albums yet?? This is obviously good, but it’s never reached me like my favourite Sonic Youth albums, maybe someday, but it still didn’t today.
Focus more on mantras than verses or conventional song structures with the vocal beats switching up in the background to keep it interesting. This is bold and avant-garde, the beat-boxed beats are enjoyable in the way human voices are, emotionally evocative in how they strain, soar, rasp, bark etc. I enjoyed this album more when I first heard it years ago, the problem being that while I enjoy this when it’s on the songs don’t stick in my mind and beckon me back when it’s over. But to reiterate I do enjoy the shit out of this when it’s on and I respect it just as much as ever.
Relaxed, far-flung music to background a stressful time at work. I’ll give it a more concentrated listen later.
Shattered my preconception that Elton John is a mawkish bore. Incredible highlights on this album, Candle in the Wind really hits hard and the title tracks’s chorus is glorious.
She’s in love and I’m delighted for her. My heart could explode hearing ‘Good Fortune’, but cliche drama like ‘The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore’ and ‘Kamikaze’ lack the sincere rage that made her earlier records so potent. Good for her.
They rock hard (which is their sound) but they could work on structure and content. Several minute drum solos and blatant misogyny sink enjoyment. The worst of their self-titled albums.
Iggy has an incredible, dry, raspy howl. A perfect complement to his degenerate content and the innovative in-your-face attack of the band. My only gripe is some bands would take the sound further without lingering slow ones.
According to Cee Lo Green, Ce Lo Green is the Music, is the Soul is Everything (but won’t be defined as just that). His crass self belief makes me smirk, very likeable. Good singer when he goes for it, I believe Pharrell when he says Cee Lo’s version of ‘Happy’ is way better.
Björk’s growl is incredible, the shrill scream contrasted with chimes on Birthday is a great touch and her trailing “da-da”s towards the ends show her off hand vocal smarts. Great jangly guitar and accompaniment generally, they have great rhythm on top of melodic lines. I love Björk and alt-rock so this is a no brainer I’d like it. US edition with bonus tracks not recommended. I should listen to the new Björk album, like fuck why haven’t I already?
One of the best albums of the 80s hands down. I’ll try make some lesser made observations on it’s craft.
The sound of what sounds like rocks being struck apart on Wanna Be Startin’ Something is a startling metaphor for the unstoppable momentum of its mantra.
The whole album is underrated lyrically, from Baby Be Mine’s
“Won’t you stay with me until the morning sun?
I promise you now that the dawn will be different,
Lady can't you see that heaven's just begun,
It's living here inside our hearts”
and also Human Nature’s “four walls won’t hold me tonight”
The Girl is Mine has gorgeous arrangement and the back and forth between Michael and Paul is endearing.
The wolves howling at the start of Thriller signal the commitment to the bit, “you feel the cold hand and wonder if you’ll ever see the sun” is a great line.
The back up vocalists on Beat It doing MJ ad-libs is a masterstroke.
Billie Jean is a masterpiece of layering vocals, the background “he-he”s and “no-no”s, the “Don’t think twice! Hoo!”. The tongue flicks at the beginning.
Human Nature is very romantic and whimsical lyrically, synths are beautiful.
PYT’s synth squeal is irresistible, no wonder Kanye sampled it.
The Lady In My Life has a beautiful ode to eternal love.
Ignore the narrative that this album is hits and filler. A masterpiece from front to back.
Undeniably stylish production, but when the Kung-Fu B-movie samples are more memorable than the verses, you should take some time to work on content. Killah Hills 10304 has the best narrative with its champagne bottle bomb specialist and drug mule that underwent surgery to smuggle a brick in his leg but it pales in comparison with the at once lucid, swift and impressionistic pen of prime Ghostface. Some musings on crime as product of environment on other tracks but pretty light compared to Nas or Public Enemy.
Only listened once, I see the Zappa humour comparisons in terms of immaturity but it doesn’t stare down it’s nose at you so it’s infinite times more likeable. Funny and funky.
Puddle deep moaning elevated by an orchestra.
Innately more drawn to punk rock’s thunderous blasts than post-punk’s subtly spaced minimalism, I’m surprised how much I enjoy this when it’s on. Dig the palm-muted guitar scratches and playful piano hits.
This is dumb ass shit, it’s the structure and content of the songs that ruin things rather the general sound, but it’d be aesthetically dishonest of me to deny the thrill of ‘Highway Star’. (That one even has a great organ solo!)
“I am not Jesus though I have the same initials” made me chuckle. Don’t let the sophisticated style and accent fool you, Jarvis Cocker is a degenerate. The “I guess I’m like him, I just didn’t know it then” line on Sylvia is killer.
I find it bizarre that Wings, Paul’s polite spin-off band post-Beatles are somehow worse than Dave Grohl’s polite post-Nirvana spin-off, Foo Fighters, given that Dave Grohl didn’t really write songs for Nirvana, Paul was one of the two primary songwriters and The Beatles were the greatest band to ever exist.
Very good record but I much prefer Hatful of Hollow. That said ‘I Know It’s Over’ and ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ are indelible of course. I didn’t recall ‘Frankly Mr. Shankly’ being so articulate about being willing to play the price to fulfil desire.
A great and varied record of course, but still fails to reach me like Ironman. Respect it as a classic and launchpad for many talents.
I thought I’d hate this but my hang ups with Alice Cooper turned out to be superficial, that is, image-based. ‘Elected’ lyrically sounds like a sarcastic twist on the Ramones ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’. Dig the James Bond notes ringing out on ‘Unfinished Sweet’ though the last couple minutes of the song linger. Generation Landslide doesn’t do much for me. Sick Things is corny and flat-out sucks. No More Mr. Nice Guy is corny but enjoyable in a fun campy kind of way. Mary Ann is a useless piano ballad, short at least. I Love The Dead is listenable but provides nothing that would make me want to return to it. B-side overall is worse than the A-side. Every song on side A is enjoyable, I’m sure if Alice Cooper have more songs as good as Elected I’d enjoy a Best Of collection quite a bit.
Long, tedious, indulgent, faux-deep. At least 21st Century Man sounded good when it was sampled by Kanye.
Incredible, inimitable, caustic charcuterie of a voice with more rasp than Howlin’ Wolf or Captain Beefheart. Tom Waits has an eye for morbid (and sordid) details lyrically. Great record.
“Treasuring pop brevity, arrangement and open-heartedness I enjoy the shit out of this. It’s not a Motown greatest hits collection (but what else is?). ‘You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice’’s infant duet beats out Beyoncé and Shakira’s ones from the early 2010s no contest.“
Seminal jangle pop record. If jangle pop meant more to me I'm sure this album would too.
Samples of this album are so intrinsic to classic hip hop it’d be hard for me not to enjoy it by association, that said, the ‘By The Time I Get To Arizona’ cover’s spoken word intro is awfully pathetic and overdone.
I listened to this and I just don’t get it, understanding jazz isn’t my forte and I’m working on a project and under pressure with a deadline so it was more of a passive listen than picking it apart, it was ok in the background not much made my ears perk up.
Most of the songs on Bad reveal everything they’re gonna do within their first 90 seconds. Which, to be fair, is the norm in pop. There are no spontaneous Eddie Van Halen guitar solos, Vincent Price spoken interludes, or “mama say, mama sa, mama macoosas” that break out 3 quarters of the way into songs.
However, Michael Jackson remains the best singer of his generation (and debatably of the history of recorded music). The the rhythm section has become more playful on tracks like Speed Demon and Smooth Criminal, his funk would later be perfected on Dangerous. A lot of these singles are great: ‘Man In the Mirror’, ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ etc. but Thriller didn’t have filled like ‘Liberian Girl’ or the instantly forgettable ‘Just Good Friends’. I flawed but very good record.
Jay-Z is lyrically incredible no question. But austerity both in flow and emotional expression hold him back from reaching me in a meaningful way. Some choice lines are the later Cardi B-Insta paraphrased “what you eat don’t make me shit” and Nas diss “you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song” (even if the Nas song is beyond hot). Great beats to sink your ears into throughout.
These guys rock harder than prog, maybe Lemmy joining by this point made the difference but I don’t like ‘em enough to go back and do a thorough investigation. Good riffs, but with many songs jamming over the 6-10 minute mark, I wish they were more economical (and less lyrically gimmicky).
Better than I thought it’d be for sure, title track is undeniably great, New Kid in Town captures a very raw wistfulness and Life in the Fast Lane has a great beat behind it. Wasted Time is condescending to women who don’t settle down young, it doesn’t warrant a reprise to open of the B-side, and Try and Love Again is a boring tribute to men in the same situation. The B-side overall is shades of boring, wistful and judgemental… until the anti-colonial Last Resort finishing up the record, with its acknowledgment of the American Exceptionalism branch of Christianity as a justification used for it smart and very enjoyable. I had a friend in college whose favourite band was the Eagles kept going on about their harmonies, he was right about them. I wish I’d checked it out at the time instead of being too cool for it. So yeah 4 great songs and the rest isn’t worth your time.
Four Women is great in it’s visceral, moving, uncomfortable way. Even if Jay-Z hadn’t sampled it I believe it’d still move me. The way her voice vibrates on Break Down and Let It All Out reminds me of Jefferson Airplane. Outside of that, she’s more than serviceable covering songs about love and heartbreak, but she’s not as soulful or emotionally convincing in that realm beside say, Aretha Franklin or Al Green.
Maybe the production is too slick and of its time but her tender delivery sells the songs so well I can’t help but be charmed. Opening title track has the gem of a lyric “life gets mighty precious, when there’s less of it to waste”.
Look, I’m not the biggest jazz fan, but even relative to the genre this feels very boring.
Classic made by a man from the same island as me.
As a big-nosed heterosexual man, I aspire to novelty song ‘The Humpty Dance’’s titular character’s self-proclaimed sexual magnetism and at my best moments feel his joie de vivre; great and good-humoured song. The rest however, isn’t so fun, the group’s g-funk is better than most but their misogyny is worse-than-average for the genre. Title song ‘Sex Packets’ is awful and overdone nonsense about some fictitious orgasm drug but the shorter ‘Packet Man’ manages to get some humour out of the same nonsense.
Love how he links emotion with physical sensation on most of these some gems include: the double whammy on the first track where he catches a tiger by the tail, one verse he’s “losing weight and looking mighty pale, another he’s as useless as a lead in a gale” then there’s the song where his head starts rocking and knees start knocking when he sees his lady and also the one where the faraway look in his partner’s eyes is an omen for her leaving (I bet Bruce Springsteen heard this before he wrote ‘I’m Goin’ Down’). His honky tonk reminds me of Amy Allison, I bet she dug him and alt-ed up his drawl. Great record.
I regret to say I don’t find Jonathan Richman’s innocence on The Modern Lovers to be as endearing as say Taylor Swift’s on ‘Fearless’ or Soulja Boy’s on ‘souljaboytellem.com’ (who have the advantage of being actual teenagers when they recorded those albums), but nevertheless the music is plenty catchy and he has his endearingly innocent lyrical moments; from the funny “Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole” to the beautifully well-meaning “I won’t pretend I like a girl if I really don’t”. If lovers in the modern world were all like that, we’d live in a better world.
Sure these songs should be shorter, but they’re so damn enjoyable I can’t complain, the deep bass and beat of Detroit techno slowed down to give house music funk and pulse. As minimal and repetitive as punk, but definitely not daft.
I always found it interesting that a producer so famous for his drum sound would use a drum machine in his own band. Great guitar squeals, shrill human screeches and spaced out uses of silence. These guys don’t try to pass themselves off as anything more than hateful little creeps, and it pairs pretty well with the tone of the music. If Albini had a talent for writing vocal melodies this band would bump up from being pretty great to incredible.
Saint Eteinne are ethereal, not my favourite descriptor of music but they do ethereal in a way I can get down with: drum n bass (thick, funky bass lines and heavy drums), baroque touches (peak the strings all around or the choral soundscape of ‘Stoned to Say the Least’), spoken word samples and an elegant chanteuse. Very stylish record, but I wish it were a more songful and substantial one too.
Freebird is a lot more rousing than I remembered and Tuesday’s Gone iconic riff I can finally attribute to its source. But this is mainly straight forward rock ballads at the end of the day, even if their high quality, it’s not my thing. They ain’t Creedence Clearwater Revival but I respect their influence for inspiring a brilliant Drive-By Truckers song (and probably influencing them significantly too).
Brilliant and underrated native tongues record.
In his late years, I would come to know David Crosby for his entertainingly ignorant tweets about contemporary music. But here, he’s rendered as another white guy with a guitar spewing hippie shit I don’t care about. On first passive listen it sounds pretty catchy too and might play as decent musical wallpaper, well played David Crosby.
Three of the four indelible tracks (namely ‘Like A Prayer’, ‘Cherish’ and ‘Express Yourself’) all appear on the Immaculate collection in superior forms. The other one, the fantastical ‘Dear Jessie’ is a must listen here. The rest of it is serviceable filler some a bit weaker (‘Promise to Try’ and the also the Prince duet dissapointingly).
One of the best hip hop albums ever made, standard edition is two tracks too long away from being perfect. Personal narrative makes this one more engaging than TPAB for me.
Edgy. Trent Reznor’s emotional palette and lack of self awareness leave a lot to be desired but he’s matured beyond screaming nursery rhymes at least. Try not to think too much about content and let the production’s noise and detail impress you, it’s too good to deny.
One of my favourite albums going into adolescence. Although the explicit details of Underwater Love make it an unmistakable retelling of Narcissus, I can’t ascribe deep philosophical themes to Patton’s original stories. While I could interpret ‘Zombie Eaters’ as some kind of metaphor for trauma bonding relationships, Patton’s whine betrays this angle and reveals it to be merely about an evil baby (while I seemed satisfied to accept that as good content at 14, not so much now). There’s great thrill in most of the music here, especially the title track and Epic (which made ears perk up and head nod when I heard it at a bar a couple of months ago) better funk and rhythm than Red Hot Chilli Peppers certainly and the fact the guitar doesn’t go overboard with solos and the shredding serves the songs is gratifying. The last track is odious for obvious reasons. A very good album for, and I hate to use this qualifier, it’s genre. Listen to Angel Dust instead; it’s a great album, no qualifier.
Stone cold classic. She Said She Said perennially underrated.
Hitting their potential/destiny with this pop crossover 6 years post-debut. It can’t touch Aerosmith’s 20 year post-debut smash sellout ‘Get a Grip’.
Astute and confident writers, a landmark record that captured the imagination of many women, a major footprint on the path to bands like Sleater-Kinney.
Title track is perhaps her best song (according to myself and Parton herself). Travelling man is a fun story, the rest is pretty good but doesn’t reach the height of the title track.
Very underrated compared to its sequel, and I may actually prefer it. Melodies less suffocated so easier to pick apart. More lo-fi too which has its charms. Dig how lyrically they link the physical with divinely precious emotions.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ hadn’t softened me up to ‘More Than A Feeling’ and Girl Talk hadn’t softened me up to ‘Foreplay / Long Time’ by overlaying a Southern rapper (Ludacris, I believe) over a portion of it. But dammit this is still clinically constructed bullshit. I’ll take The Cars as my power pop innovators of choice, they never had the dissonance of claiming to be wild while sounding precise.
Has dated poorly. I prefer the more songful ‘Protection’ but forget the group… ‘Maxinquaye’ is the best.
I can’t think of a worse professional singer offhand than Dave Mustaine.
Classic power pop document. First three tracks and ‘Moving in Stereo” are top shelf stuff, the other five are serviceable to the sound.
The sound effects on Lovely Rita are underrated. Every line is met with delightful sound effects and surprises at every turn. Classic.
Great title track, used to soundtrack many food advertisements and film sequences. The rest is quite homogenous and agreeable. Respect the sound but not enough is done with it. Fine in the background but don’t expect me to tell one track from another.
To me, Beth Gibbons is not the hypnotic sex goddess others hear. Don’t remember the music being so rich in drums and scratches, nice stuff but I’ll take prime Tricky over it any day.
Do NOT listen to this album while driving, holy fuck I nearly crashed. Bangers tho.
Nice heavy riffs, two of the singles are enjoyably melodic too. But Dexter Holland sounds like an overgrown brat, and his lyrics don’t show a worldview any wider than the average adolescent brat.
Good sound, not much in the way of content.
