Prefer the droning, not the lyrics. Good as background music for a workday, but I don't think I could actively sit down and listen to this as an album experience.
A bunch of the songs sounded the same, and were too long. The best one, You Shook Me All Night Long, did not have as much of the shrieking as many of the earlier songs on the album, and was less of a copy of the first few songs on the album. I don't know if I like the song Back in Black or if I've just heard it a lot of times.
12 years between the last album on our list, Back in Black, and both have songs that talk about the importance of rock and roll. Yet they are very different flavors of rock and roll, and REM is one of the bands at the top of the family tree of music that I listen to these days. In a lot of these songs I can hear influences in alternative music today, or at least generations of influences modulated into parts of today's indie/alt music.
Everybody Hurts was a song I listened to a bunch in high school as an anxiety-ridden teen, like one does, so it still has a special place in my heart even if it might be overdone.
Nightswimming should have been the closing song of the album.
I'd rather listen to King Crimson, or Three Dog Night, or Creedence Clearwater Revival especially. I guess I can hear the proto-punk here, but this one doesn't do it for me.
The vocals on Ramblin' Rose were rough, and put me in a bad place for the next couple songs. Borderline was a pretty good listen.
Sunshine of Your Love is still a banger. Eric Clapton is an antivax asshole. 3.5 rounded down because of Clapton ruining his own legacy.
Aw yeah, King Crimson. Some prog rock for your brain. I've never listened to this album before, my main exposure to King Crimson has been "In The Court of the Crimson King" and, specifically, 21st Century Schizoid Man. Also, I did not know when talking about MC5 a couple days ago the Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer was a part of King Crimson too. Anyways.
I like the journey that this album takes me on, although not the parts that are just percussion. I've never been one to shy away from a long song as long as I'm into it, and I'm into a lot of the songs on this album. But the stretches of Larks' Tongues In Aspic parts I and II that were kinda meh bump this from a possible 4 to a 3.
I expected these songs to be a little more upbeat, but they seemed full of melancholy. I don't know where I got that impression, but the melancholy runs throughout.
Just What I Needed is a banger. Moving In Stereo was the low point, and I didn't like All Mixed Up. Took it from a 4.567 to a 3.843, but I'll round up to a 4.
Meh. The songs sound so much the same that the impact them is lost without the music videos.
Bridge Over Troubled Water. El Condor Pasa. The Boxer. Only Living Boy In New York. I grew up with all of these songs, my parents playing this album over and over again (as well as the Central Park concert album) and I stole a copy of the CD and squirreled it away up to my room.
Later, when I was in college, this album came back again with Garden State. There's no need to go into the backlash, the backlash to the backlash, the backlash to the backlash to the backlash, etc etc ad infinitum about that movie, but the soundtrack really was a big deal for me. Did The Shins change my life? Who knows, but I do know that ever since I've *loved* The Only Living Boy in New York.
The music of Cecilia is great, the lyrics though....yikes.
Oh, Porcelain and South Side are the songs I know from this album.
Go listen to "The Genealogy Detective" and their 3 part series on whether Moby is actually a relative of Herman Melville like he has claimed to be.
Lean, clean, and bluesy.
Ramble Tamble is a fun kick-off to the album. Lookin' Out My Back Door, Run Through the Jungle, Up Around The Bend, Who'll Stop the Rain, and I Heard it Through the Grapevine are all songs that I grew up with and have known forever. It's also just a great bouquet of songs. When Google Play Music (rip) was still a thing, Who'll Stop the Rain was my all-time most played song.
There's a reason that when we got one of the previous albums (MC5?) I said that I'd have preferred especially CCR. This album is great.
I like Tom Waits in a lot of contexts. The Day After Tomorrow is a masterpiece. This isn't it for me. Too much marimba. Why does every album need a novelty track? And why did Tom Waits lead the album with his novelty song?
Listened to this album throughout my entire childhood and high school life. My parents loved this album, so I have a lot of fond memories of songs like Suite Judy Blue Eyes and Marrakesh Express. But my current favorite song on this album is Helplessly Hoping, because I'm a sucker for a lover song and a love song about a family.
