Great surprise. Was aware of a couple of tracks - but this album is so consistently good. Staying on playlist!
Lyrics and delivery - 10/10! Chilled and ethereal - but with a sense of humour.
5 star album
This was playing in the background at every party in 1993 and sounded perfect. Still does if you're not listening to the lyrics. The cartoon gansta schtick has not aged well. Sounds like 12 year olds showing off. But Snoop's delivery is smooth and the vibe is still cool. A version with the verse vocals removed would be an improvement. Music/vibe - 5 Lyrics -1
I'm guessing M.I.A. would love how marmite the reviews on 1001 are - mostly 5 or a 1. And there is something cool about that. But I'm going to have to side with the guys voting 1. I just don't see it. I only knew Paper Planes, and I wish that were still true. There are so many good ideas in Paper Planes, and then one idea per track after that. Repetitive and annoying. Jimmy was listenable, and that's the best I can do.
Too much like a session band on autopilot. The musical competence oozes out the speakers.
I was always a greatest hits kind of Bowie fan. Then I got into Ziggy, Diamond Dogs and it felt good in an easy to access kind of way. Low took a few more listens, but I'm glad I stuck with it. And Heroes is the same. It keeps getting a bit better each time, and feels right to consume as a whole album. Gonna give Station to Station another try now.
effortless class.
Marr 5+ Morrisey -5 Songs - 3-4
Must have hit a very specific age of teenagers because there's nothing here that's new or better than can be found in a thousand other bands. Bit whiny and samey.
I've tried so hard. Freinds said listen to Nick Drake. BBC radio docs with Brad Pitt- listen to Nick Drake. Spotify adds him to every playlist I make. Everything points to me liking Nick, but I just don't get it. I tried again - listening to the whole album in order. The high points are average. Maybe he's been copied too much, but I just didn't hear anything special.
Voodoo Chile and All Along the Watchtower are perfection, obviously. The rest of the album is baggy by comparison, but it's Jimi. He'd earned it by this point.
The Jam were a great band. Weller after/without the Jam is embarassing and dull. I don't get the reverence. I can't imagine him getting signed if this was a demo. Pants.
I can tell this is good, and they were way ahead of thier time. Just in a genre that leaves me cold.
Removing the title track it's a solid 3. All nice and groovy while it's playing, but doesn't stick with you.
This almub refused to give up. The consistent originality and quality and flood of ideas is just amazing.
Synchronicity I, King of Pain and Wrapped around your finger still sound good - especially King of Pain. Every Breath is what it is. Then a lot of average/interesting filler. Ms Gradenko and Mother though! Horrific. Take those two tracks of the album and it's a 4.
Didn't really know his stuff. Very chilled feel that feels good doing it's thing in the background. The songs have depth though. I can see myself coming back to this and getting more out of it with each play.
Feels churlish knocking this as it's amazing, but too many Paul tracks and a weak George contribution make this feel unbalanced. Just imagine if they hadn't been under pressure to put a single out, so Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane were on here instead of Within you Without you and Lovely Rita. Then I think less than a 5 would sounds stupid.
No bad tracks. Great sound overall. She Wants to Move the only standout track on a solid album. 3.5
I've listened to zep before and never really got the hype. Always dismissed their success as \"good for the time.\" Perhaps I was kicking against the fawning adulation they seem to inspire. And there have been so many imitators some of their uniqueness gets lost. But listening to all 4 sides of this double album in order I've absolutely loved it. The variety and constant quality. I thought before listening I'd give this a 3, maybe a 4. But dang it...
The songs, the band, Johnny - a solid 4 without the audience, perhaps a 3 if country isn't your bag. But the atmosphere is unlike any live album. The electricity is tanglible. Johnny delivering the song stories, playing the crowd, the humour, the darkness. June Carter coming on to sing Jackson. Has to be a 5, whoever you are?
Only 28 minutes long, but I would cut 26 of them. Blue Suede Shoes comes out of the block strongly, but after that I was amazed how twee it all sounded. I've Got A Woman was especially watered down. The 'Elvis made black music accessible to easily frightened white folk' is an old trope, but listening to this album it's difficult to see it as anything but a cynical money grab. Elvis is in there trying to get out, but he's being compromised from the start.
It feels like the end is nigh. The grit has gone and they're coasting on the wave of guitar wank Eddie started in the 70s and the 80s od-ed on. David Lee Roth seems very happy with the "hey, aren't girls hot, let's party" schtick, you can tell Eddie isn't. Even the good songs are laboured. You can hear Eddie get bored when the verse hits for Panama. He just holds a chord, probably turning the page of the want ads looking for available singers. When Eddie does turn in some decent guitar stuff, Dave gurns tired, sexist gibberish over it on "Girl Gone Bad," "Drop Dead Legs" and "Hot for Teacher".
Eno makes a bad lounge act sound like they might be interesting. But even he has limits. Ferry isn't even a good crooner. He's a pretentionus, slimy git. We can all agree they make good almbum covers though.
someone else on here described this as yacht rock. I can't bettter that description.
Like CSN, it's fine/tolerable when it's on. But my god it's bland.
inevitably sounds dated, but still quality and a good listen.
inventive, trippy, fun. Funkier and more mellow than I was expecting. Will be exploring more of his stuff.
Much imitated. Living after Midnight remains a solid tune. Rapid Fire and Steeler had good energy. Feels repetitive and formulaic now. Bet they were good to see live.
Yesterday my album was Judas Priest, 1980. I made allowances/excuses for it sounding dated. Today I listen to a 1974 Queen rip through Stone Cold Crazy packing more metal and muscle into one track than the whole Priest album. Then they have a banjo on Leroy Brown, piano sprinkled throughout, huge guitar riffs with cheezy witty vocal harmonies. It shouldn't work. We all know the hits, but Queen make even more sense when you hear an album. They made music for themselves. Diverse, funny, unafraid, unique. Loved it.
Sometimes a great talent can put a twist on an old theme and it feels fresh - like Amy Whinehouse. It might have felt like this is what KD Lang was doing back in the late 80s, but it's justa covers band with a nice singer.
Good to hear Creedence as an album rather than a greatest hits list, although 33 minutes with 7 songs feels like they lost some master tapes or something. And last track Keep On Chooglin' is an indulgent, pointless 7 and a half minute make-weight. If you're going to have a jam at least pick a good riff or groove for your paint-by-numbers guitar and harmonica solos. So 6 decent tracks - a great side 1.
Much more textured than I thought it would be. Could be a musical theatre soundtrack, if that musical was a freaky, sleazy blues-rock musical set in a haunted high school. The musicality is impressive too. Rather unfairly I was expecting a 12 bar blues bar room kind of feel, but they throw in Blue Turk - a jazzy, saxy bordello vibe, then go into My Stars which is an operatic opus with more changes than a Jim Steinbeck song. Alma Mater sounds like McCartney. And it's a tight 9 songs in 37 minutes. A lesser band would have had made a couple of these songs 8 minute numbers to pad it out. Track 3 (Gutter Rat vs The Jets) was a bit dull and I nearly gave up on this, thinking I had got the gist of the album after Schools Out and a good fun rock number Luney Tune. Glad I stuck with it.
I'm going to have to come back to this album sometime. It's obviously got something interesting going on but I'm just not connecting with it. Sometimes it feels a bit too much like teenage poetry "I feel like a cork on the ocean," etc.... The music is complex and beuatifully arranged, which you'd expect. But it just didn't work for me. It might on another day.
This was ridiculous. Full Spinal Tap. Loved it.
it is amazing Dave was able to make this album on his own to this level of performance and production. Doesn't make it good though.
Storms out of the gates with 3 crunchy, OTT, winning tracks - Wild Flower, Peace Dogs, Li'l Devil. Followed by 4 bland, underwhelming songs that never needed to be recorded. Track 8 -Love Removal Machine- offers a moment of hope. Can they rally and pull this back? But then a disappointing cover of Born to Be Wild and 2 more tracks that aren't even worthy of being called filler finish off an album that feels like it could have been so much better. The production is great - vocals, guitars, drums and bass clearly separated out letting the band sound tight and focussed. A simple approach that Rick Rubin did very well with at a time when bands were mushing everything together in a distortion-pedal wall of sound to try to sound like Led Zep.. It works great for the Cult on tracks 1,2,3,8 - This was a cracking EP.
This was my introduction to Bruce, and I liked it at the time. But through it I found Born to Run and Nebraska, and this all felt a bit 2D. Every song is strong Althought I always felt I'm on Fire was creepy. And Working on the Highway is worse - ran away with an underage girl, brothers caught him and he's tried and sent prison to work on the chain gang - all told like he's the everyday hero that just can't catch a break. Is it satire? I want it to be satire. I liked the reviews on here describing the album as a road trip that gets more complex, which I can totally see now. And there are quality Bruce numbers in No Surrender and My Hometown. It all adds up to a 5 really, but something makes me not want to give it that.
didn't like this music when it was new and still don't. Tainted Love is one of the best cover versions ever, and Say hello, wave goodbye is a decent song. The rest was quite hard work.
I'd never heard an AHA album track before. Or maybe I had and just couldn't remember them, becaues it's 1 minute since the album finished and I can't tell you about a single track outside the big 3 singles. Sun always shines on TV and the title track are decent songs. Take on Me is it's own universe. The others were a background noise I dimly remember. 2.5 - 3.
One of the best voices every recorded trapped in '80s purgatory.