Why do they repeat the choruses like fifty times? Seems like they're padding out the runtime, and not very well at that...the album's only 34 minutes even with all that repetition. It's weird feeling nostalgic for an album ive never heard, but this is the prototype for a lot of the big, dumb rock albums my teenage self loved in the late 90s/early 2000s. I loved "Detroit Rock City" and "Shout it out Loud" going in, so points for those, though I'm not huge on the extra sound affects/setup on DRC. "Beth" kind of sucks? But if I'd been born twenty years earlier I would probably love this album. But I wasn't and I don't.
I liked "Into the Drink" well enough but probably only in comparison to the rest of it. I can't imagine ever listening to this again.
I feel like a dork giving this one a five after just giving Mudhoney a one but I gotta be me. I've known and loved this album for a while and it was a treat to hear it again.
Got this one right after "The Man Machine." Kindof cool to see the progression of the same sort of music a decade and a half later. 90s heist music. Doesn't transport me like other similar albums but great driving music.
Generic-sounding 60's rock. Luckily I sort of like 60s rock so extra star for that.
Its ok, some catchy parts (I like "Jump Boys") but there are other albums like this that are better.
I might be turning into my dad but this is good stuff. I feel like part of music appreciation is knowing that there are different "uses" for different music. This isn't pump-up music or political music (unless the politics lie in something subtle like "oh he played a D7 here instead of a straight up D how inflammatory" which I acknowledge could very well be the case). Its "everything's cool" music, with a smattering of weird time signatures to keep things interesting. The problem is I have the feeling that all the "everything's cool" records are going to get five out of five from me no matter what because I don't really know what separates a good "everything's cool" record from a great one.
I found it funny that the biggest hit from this has a prolonged drum solo in it.
But yeah Mr. Rogers learning how crayons are made vibes and I'm 100% in.
Amazing this is their first album. Yes there are some filler tracks but the rest is so transcendant, so genuinely sleazy and killer and fun, that I can't in good conscience give it anything but five out of five.
Marvin Gaye seems like he has one foot in the sixties and one in the seventies in this one. I was expecting some straight 70s R&B and got that, but, like, sort of psychedelic too, which was a cool surprise. Great album for a slow Sunday around the house. I loved it.
Want to hear something blasphemous? I think some of the records inspired by The Boss do blue-collar earnestness better than Bruce himself (namely The Killers' "Sam's Town" and The Hold Steady's "Boys and Girls in America"). But I guess Bruce had to walk so these bands could run. Should've been called "Born to Walk." The singles are so, so good. When the sax dropped on "Thunder Road" I was like "oh yeah, five stars, baby". "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" is probably my favorite song by Springsteen. The title track is amazing. Jungleland is pretty cool too. But, you know, that's what greatest hits albums are for. Sorry, Bruce. Hope "Nebraska" is on this album list, that one's better.
Some gorgeous songs and production here and some pretty good. One eye opening aspect of this project is seeing how much my favorite artist were influenced by records from days of yore, in this case Beck (on "Morning Phase" particularly) and Fleet Foxes (the whole darn discography). 3.5 rounding up cause that's how we did it in math class.
I connect with this album but I don't connect connect like some people do, and I'm almost envious about it. I think part of it is the "you had to be there"-ness of it all, and I was a shade too young. But some monster tracks on here that I would give my right pinky to hear for the first time. Or maybe the pinky finger-nail. If there was anesthesia involved. But still. Good-to great record.
This was a slippery one for me. I've heard it before but had rejected it. On re-listeni g, there were parts that were genuinely thrilling ("The Great Curve" is like my internal monologue when I've had too much coffee and am running errands...in the best way possible) but other parts I was sort of bored (most of the second half, honestly).
There's something here that draws me back. I've listened to it twice more since the first obligatory listen, and liked it no more and no less. So it's 3.4, rounding down to 3.
Some nice ear candy here, but sort of seemed surface level/not cohesive when compared to other records in the genre. I had fun in parts though, and that's worth something.
Some pretty sounding parts but mostly I don't really want to listen to this again.
I'm a fan of some of Alex Turner's stuff with the Arctic monkeys. This was alright but a bit forgettable by comparison.
It's 1994, but also it's sort of the future, 3am. I'm in an anonymous bar in an anonymous metropolis. I'm investigating a murder, possibly committed by a cyborg. My contact hasn't shown up, so I wait, a drink of stale whiskey in my hand. I keep one eye on the door and the other on the stage, where, through the cigarette smoke, this band is playing. Portis-something. Kids these days. Man, the world these days. The crime I'm investigating - I've been at it too long. Awful stuff. I can't get my head straight. The whiskey makes my head swim, almost psychedelic, like those old hippies were talking about down in Badgertown. But I realize with a start that it isn't the drink affecting me, but the music. What is this? Some new drug the Lab-men have cooked up? I look around. Others are similarly entranced. Staring, their eyes all-but swirling like some cartoon character.
Portishead, I remember. All one word, a word with no meaning as far as I know. I'll check the archives, if I remember. I glance up. My contact has arrived. I'm almost disappointed as I tear my attention away from this band, this beguiling singer. But I'm on the clock. I nod and he sits and we get down to business.
Alright. I love this album, but full disclosure: if this was my first listen i would have given it a 3, tops. This was a cd I bought because of the glowing reviews...back when cds were $20. So, having invested all this money, what was I going to do? Not listen to it? I remember when it finally clicked. I was on a Greyhound bus, half asleep, listening on my discman. And then suddenly I was awake, thinking "oh, I like Kid A now." This is a somewhat common experience for me. Somehow, half-asleep me is more receptive to music.
Are there other albums I'd rather listen to? Yes, of course. This record is depressive as hell. It's not even my favorite Radiohead record. But it's also really really good, and fives don't cost anything baby. I gave "Appetite for Destruction" a five, and I listen to "Kid A" more than I listen to that one. "Kid A" is the exact opposite album of "Appetite for Destruction," so much so that I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in history to mention the two records in the same sentence. But one cannot exist without the other. Yin and yang, etc. Five stars!
Brass is a funny thing. I love when it shows up unexpected in music. Like the saxophone on "Thunder Road" (as mentioned in my "Born to Run" review). A well placed trumpet or sax can just elevate a song, like a dash of cinnamon in a nice mulligatawny soup. You didnt know it'd be good until you tried it.
That said, I don't want a mouthful of cinnamon. Too many people all playing brass at once sort of kills it for me. That said, I didn't hate this. It just mostly seemed like nice wallpaper.
It's a bit of a relief, because after "Time Out" I'd just assumed I'd love all the jazz albums on this without understanding why. Well, I still don't understand why...this one, like "Time Out" would be good to put on while cooking that aforementioned mulligatawny. But I just didnt like this one so much.
Kd Lang has always been on the periphery of my awareness, though I'm familiar with "Constant Craving" which was everywhere for a while. That song, I think, is more suited to her voice. She sounds ageless, like the ghost that haunts my attic. Why is the ghost that haunts my attic having a hoedown?
OK I know live albums would be hard to record in the 50s but this is not the greatest quality. Musicianship top notch but not really my thing. Like "Water from an Ancient Well" a little too brassy which is not my thing. I feel like if I was there instead of listening to a fuzzy recording I would have been blown away. But if I was there there would have been a time machine involved and I would probably be too stressed trying to remember/prevent future events from happening to fully enjoy myself. So either way, two stars.
Snoop Dogg seems, more than his peers, to be playing a part. Nobody is this cool in the face of hard drugs and extreme violence. It's a refresher from the neurotic, overcaffenated reality of my own self, melting down because I'm five minutes late for work.
The record's a sort of phantasmigorical mess. We're at a house party, but also we're listening to the radio? Then we're in the afterlife for a bit, then back at the party? But it works. I have a working theory that the west coast rappers of the 90s were the prototype of the MCU (though sticklers could argue the Marvel comics were that). Hearing some of the older albums like this and Dr. Dre's first, I can see how cross referential they are with the later ones, which adds a bit of Easter-egg spotting.
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I want music and artists like this to exist. I want weirdness in the world. I realize David Byrne is a thoughtful guy and a true artist (check out his book "How Music Works" if you haven't, its great). I just...don't want to listen to this. The best song by far is "Take me to the River" and that's a cover.
I liked "Remain in Light" a bit better so I think maybe Talking Heads were just a bit undercooked at this point in their career.
It's funny, I've just spent the week obsessing over the new Gorillaz (Damon Albarn's other project that's arguably now more successful than Blur) album ("The Mountain"). It's so good. Unlike this album which I didn't like very much at all. It just goes to show...something.
OK I had Blur yesterday (the "lesser" of a who's better rivalry between them and Oasis) and now Offspring who (at least in my circles) were compared to Green Day. I'm expecting a Megadeth album any day now. For the curious, I'm team Oasis (barely), Green Day (though I like a lot of Offspring singles) and Metallica. I guess I'm just basic that way.
Anyway this is a 2.5 bumped up to a three because 2 seemed too low. So a 2.55 really. Again, I like the singles, and the other parts were palatable enough but made me sort of wish I was listening to Insomniac or something.
"Your call is important to us"
Some of this sounds like what I imagine people who don't like jazz think all jazz is - that is four or five people playing stuff that's unrelated all at the same time. At times it sounds like a panic attack. The wildness is weighed by other moments of focus that show that everything here is deliberate. I was going between 3 and 4 and landed on three because, while I enjoyed it enough, I doubt I'll be coming back to this one when Miles Davis' "In a Silent Way" is right there.
Paul McCartney is my favorite Beatle. That said, like Ethan Hawke said in that video, The Beatles work best as a whole, greater than the sum and all that. I love some of the songs here but by the end (around when they started bringing in the melodies from the previous tracks) it dawned on my that McCartney sometimes skews a little too cute on his own. Did the other Beatles temper these impulses only for them to come out stronger when he was surrounded by yes-men? Or did it happen as he aged? We may never know. Still, pretty darn enjoyable.
I had a few false starts on this one where I got busy and had to stop listening. I think this helped my perception of it, because I became somewhat familiar with the first half. The record seems a little "we have grizzly bear at home" with a dash of the Strokes? All throughout I was going between 3 and a 4 but the saxophone on Coronado pushed it to a 4. Musicians take note - throw on some sloppy saxophone and I am helpless to resist.
"Halcyon Digest" seems a bit impenetrable on the surface (I had to look up "halcyon;" that cover art) but really the whole record pretty listener-friendly. It is surprisingly hooky, with some hypnotic jam passages that I dig. I'll revisit this one for sure.
I'm a pretty relaxed guy. If we're in the car and you put on something I don't care for, whatever, that's fine. It doesn't hurt me to listen to music I dislike. I will make no comment. Usually. I think if someone put this one on, I'd politely ask them to change it to anything else. Maybe the Village People version of "Go West." That song slaps.
54 albums in and have had two Leonard Cohen albums already - the last one and now the first. On "You Want it Darker" Cohen's voice sounded weather-worn and life-worn. Here he just sounds like some guy. Sometimes it feels like the music is incidental, like Cohen had the poems and wanted a way to make people actually sit and listen to them. Though there are a few moments to perk up the ears ("So Long, Marianne," for example) they are few and far between.
Note: when the album was done Spotify autoplayed Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" and I thought it was still Cohen and was like, "oh I should rethink this." Nope.
My biggest gripe about rock radio, repeated to my wife as often as they repeat "Loser" by Beck is, how come they repeat "Loser" by Beck so much when there are so many other amazing Beck songs? Nothing against "Loser," which is great, but I feel like Beck is underappreciated for this reason.
This album is tied with "Odelay" and "Midnite Vultures" for first place in the Beck pantheon, though "Sea Change", "Morning Phase" and even "The Information" are worthy contenders. Wish he would do another album with The Dust Brothers. I've heard "Guero" so much it's imprinted on my DNA, but I listened to it again today and it's perfect. No skips. Easiest 5 yet.
Huge disappointment. Im a big fan of "Every Morning" and "Fly" off of their record 14:59, but this couldn't be a huger departure from--wait, I'm just getting a message, one moment...uh huh...uh huh...ohhhhh. OK that makes sense.
Still...not really my thing, though the fact that I listened to this on the first beautiful day of spring instead of the bleakest part of winter might have to do with my rating.
Admittedly I thought this one was a 2 for the first couple tracks...interesting enough but sort of boring. But from "The Click Song" onwards I was surprised and delighted again and again. "The Naughty Little Flea" sounds like something a mother would sing to her kid if she was an awesome mom."Mbube" was clearly the inspiration for "In the Jungle" (as I'm sure a million others will note, but I make a point not to look at the other reviews until I've done mine). By the time I heard the guy cracking up on "One More Dance" I was smiling. This records a charmer, and while I can't see having it in heavy rotation, I will be revisiting it again here and there.
Ok I don't know why but my review was deleted. Basically, this is just a bunch of guys playing at once. I once said I'd give any jazz album a 5 even though I don't know anything about anything but come one. You gotta be able to hang your hat on something. I do not believe there is a person on this planet that could identify which song a random ten second snippet of this record is from. This is what people who hate jazz think of when they think of jazz. Even the audience seemed uninterested, as you can hear them chatting throughout.
This one was...fine. I'm a fan of a couple other S&G records but hadn't heard this one (save "Mrs. Robinson" which slaps). The part with the voices of old people seemed like it could have been omitted. It brought to mind skits on rap albums for some reason, but not quite as fun. Clearly a lot of effort put into the songs and a pleasant enough listen. So 2.5 rounded to 3.
Your favorite band's favorite band, as they say. Never really gave them a proper listen until now, but I can see where this reputation comes from. This record sounds like it was recorded in 1994 instead of 1989, and a million bands from the 90s and beyond sound like them. Obviously Kurt Cobain was a fan. I also hear some Mother Mother here and there?
Unfortunately I'm not rating on the influence a record had, but how much I enjoyed it personally. I liked it, but didn’t love it.
I was hesitant on this one going in, mainly because Frank Zappa always kind of struck me as a novelty act, weird for the sake of being weird. Or, as a pidcaster I enjoy put it, seeming like a guy who's never done drugs making music for drug users.
I did have a lingering confusion about all the guitar guys claiming Zappa was some next-level musical genius.
Well, this album is it. I get it now. Turns out I'm just not a fan of Zappa singing or speaking on his songs, and there's blessedly little of that on this record. "Hot Rats" has more in common with that version of Zappa as it does with the numeroys jazz albums this list has me listening to. Except on those albums I knew what I was getting pretty much right off the bat, for better or worse, whereas this one continually surprised me, and, importantly, continually entertained me.
Kind of generic mid oughts hip hop. Great production amd fun to listen to, but I can't ever see having a hankering for this one.
I've heard of this artist but never listened. Sometimes I think, what if another artist had done this record? I'm a huge Jeff Tweedy fan, and will give any mid-period Wilco album five stars, but I'm not huge on his solo stuff. There's too much of it and it's sort of...samey. But if Jeff Tweedy came out with this record instead of Badly Drawn Boy, this would be an all-timer for sure. Part of that would be the unexpectedness of it. Maybe this is par for the course for Badly Drawn Boy (but there's some range here, so great range is par for the Badly Drawn Boy course). I don't know, I've never heard another Badly Drawn Boy record.
All this is me trying to figure why I'm giving this a four when, if it were Jeff Tweedy I would give it a five. I don't have a satisfactory answer. Maybe I don't like English accents (I'm neutral to English accents). Maybe I'll come back and change this to a five (I won't). Maybe....maybe....maybeeeee
Haven't heard this one before but Paul's always a chill hang. I like "The Late Great Johnny Ace."
Music that captures the feeling of being drunk (not to be confused with music that captures the reality of being drunk...Sex Pistols or something). I wasn't day drinking on the Tuesday morning I heard this one, so that might be part of the problem.
What do you score it when you like each individual song on something very much, but only when there is lime a month between tracks? I was leaning towards 2, but "Anything Goes" reminded me of how much I like "Temple of Doom" so I'll make it a 3.
I'm a huge Prodigy fan, but when I say that I really mean I'm a huge "Fat of the Land" fan. Everything that comes before (this and "Experience") has always struck me as unformed, though this one has a few glimpses of what would later make FOTL so great. Later releases, by contrast, also have moments of brilliance but never quite capture the cohesive vibe that is FOTL.
If I had to pick a second favorite Prodigy album, this is it. But it's far behind. "Break and Enter," "Their Law," "Voodoo People," "Poison," and "3 Kilos" are great. Love love love when the bass drops on "Poison." The rest I could take or leave.
Every so often I revisit this album. It has a special place in my heart. Just not that special.
I do like the intro track. Yesterday I had a Sinatra record, and I think I would have liked it better if it had had "So, I've decided to take my work back underground. To stop it from falling into the wrong hands." Smash cut to "You Make me Feel so Young."
This rating thing is messing with my mind. Like, I gave Deerhunter a 4 and I'm gonna give Little fucking Richard a 2??
Let me just say, if I had been alive when this came out, I would have worn out the record. I would have eaten this like candy. But I have a lot more stuff - admittedly stuff that wouldn't exist without the likes of Little Richard - to choose from. Stuff that improved on this formula.
Like a recent Sinatra record I got, if I heard this record over the course of days, with many hours in between, I might have liked it more. But every song was...and I hate this word but...samey? Like Little Richard just repeating some line and then going "woooo" over a blues lick. And, don't get me wrong, it's a winning combo, but not over and over again. Also each song made me feel like I was watching a Stephen King movie set in the 50s, like "ah yeah, here's me and my pals, hula hooping or some shit, things were never quite the same after Steve got turned into a vampire" etc...
So 2 it is. My consolation is I know for a fact that there exists Little Richard music that I enjoy more than this, and I hope it turns up on this list sometime.
I think I prefer ADT Madonna to BDT (After/Before Dick Tracy). I like the singles ok, and "Dear Jessie" and "Spanish Eyes" were interesting. It was also cool to hear Prince - I didn't know they'd collaborated. But for the most part this was a slog.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S NOT IN THE COMPUTER" almost saved it for me.
As I said about another album, lots of this sounds like what people who don't like jazz think jazz sounds like, but this time in a good way? (Mainly the track "Sly") The album I was referring to then was "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" by Bill Evans Trio. This, like that album often sounds like people are just playing whatever without an ear for what anyone else is doing. But here it seems...controlled somehow. A genuine display of music madness that comes apart and together again on a pin.
The 70s-ness of it all doesn't hurt either
Love the spacey keyboard and the wakawaka guitars. You know what I'm talking about. Also "Vein Melter" as a title is metal as fuck. I was surprised at how chill it was.
Even 30 seconds in this was a fuck yeah for me. A rare 5 that I've never had to let grow on me beforehand.
Huh. Thought I would love this one but only kinda liked it. "Up on Cripple Creek" is a banger though.
