wond'ring aloud is good, nice guitar, 70s folk sound
hymn 43 and locomotive breath are the songs I like best as examples of prog rock on album
Long Black Veil is a nice cover. Baritone on it blows super low notes. Thought it was the elusive rock tuba at first. Lyrics remind me a little of the speculation about Joe Hill and why he wouldn't provide an alibi to prevent his execution.
I feel like American Beauty is influenced by this but better. The weight is great and everybody knows that, caledonia mission is some of the best of what goes on here, chest fever the other good one, but not hitting as well as my other faves, but I admit it's the good shit. Christgau didn't like this one and loved the second. I'm excited to listen to that one, because this one does seem a super slow burn besides the songs I like. Starts a little like tranquilizer folkrock. 3.5/5
Good Dusty, version with more songs, especially Can I get a Witness makes it even better. I don't connect with it as much as Dusty in Memphis, but that's hard to top for anyone. 4/5
Best songs to my ears: Love is Here to stay, you brought a new kind of love to me, how about you?
Ones I knew that are still good: you make me feel so young, I've got you under my skin (5+), makin' whoopee
Need some more attentive listening of this again. Harmonies, song evolutions are wild. I'll listen more for lyrics. Favorite on first listen was the joni mitchell woodstock cover. always liked our house, helpless. Almost cut my hair and 4+20 were favorite new discoveries.
Makes me want to get Robert Mitchum's Night of the Hunter tattoos on my knuckles. An all time great album from one of my favorite songwriters ever. Last Year's Man ++++++++++++++
Nice to re-listen. Roses and Mushrooms stood out, and it starts sooo strong.
So good. I like his direction after this, too. Midnight Vultures, Sea Change and Guero. A lot he can do with a good groove. 4.5/5
I really like this. Great Outlaw Country stuff. Favorite songs: Red Headed Stranger, Denver, Time of the Preacher, Remember Me (when candle lights gleaming). Probably a full five, but I'm marinating on it still.
I like some of the blues rock on this. It's fun, and when it's shaggier I like it best. Teenage Head, 32-20, Evil Hearted Ada were good in addition to the "hits"
I like David Gray when he's backgrounded somewhere and a couple songs may be ones I come back to, but mostly didn't spark my fancy over a couple listens.
An all time favorite for me. Alameda hit this time for me.
Wild in the disparate directions and talents on display here. It's more interesting and a wild time capsule of a lot of what a band could do on a single album, than something I feel like I connect with. If it'd been something you listened to with the first time you heard Bohemian Rhapsody it probably would stick with a person more. '39 was a great discovery. 3.5
Really fun. Have Love will travel is the one that gets played a lot but other than that the original songs I liked best. psycho, boss hoss, the witch, and strychnine are all great. Nice protopunk, surfy garage rock guitars on the cover. Solid 4 or 4.5
I should have known this earlier! Rock oboe on this is some of the best. So great. Eno's synth work. Just divine. Virginia Plain is great, but it's all worht a deep dive. Ladytron! Sax on if there is something!
It'd make for a really good night dancing through it all. Alive, Fresh were my favorite new discoveries on it.
Peg makes me want to listen to De La Soul. Can't really imagine rocking out to this. Steely Dan is an acquired taste I'm sure. It's got some good saxophone and harmonies. They got Wayne Shorter on the title track. I think I just crave some more volume and edge and maybe leaning into grooves a little more instead of the impressive transitions through song component parts.
I like a lot of this, interesting anti-war lyrical content, and feels a lot like some fascinating beginnings of electronic work (Kraftwerk, OMD are good comps, and human league for 'former members of the band' reasons. The original pressing I guess played to the edge of the record and looped "for a very long time" as long as the record still went, which is a cool easter egg. Side 2 decidedly was my favorite. Only didn't fancy the title track. May rate higher as I revisit
So much in this album. I'm glad to be introduced to more besides Corona which is really all I knew. 4 sides of songs. Short snippets a lot like pink flag but still all not really throw away - even with calling side 4 chaff. I think I liked the Mike side the most, but it feels a little too massive to assess in a day. Do you want new wave or do you want the truth, History Part 2, Toadies, all bubbled up first in my attention, but I'll revisit this. Great.
Keith Moon on this is amazing. Much of this I knew already, but re-listen the good's gone, it's not true, legal matter, and the ox all stood out as much as hits though my generation is so great, kids are all right, too.
Concrete Jungle - A
I like the second side most, but definitely all worth more listens.
Good post-rock. Some of it reminds of yo la tengo slow grooves
Great one. Springsteen's acclaimed stuff is filled with vocal recording that pulls emotion out of achy screams and yelps that overwhelm recording equipment capacity. I'm very here for it: state trooper at the end! Title track, Atlantic City, Used Cars, Highway patrolman are all awesome. Open All Night sounds most like a traditional hit, so I first loved that but this with more listening has got to reveal more great stuff. 4.5/5
Quite like the first half. Some world-class songs, some seem like better ones could have been selected. hurt, hung my head, bridge over troubled, man comes around are soo good in Cash's versions. Not sure why we'll meet again or danny boy (which is so much better here than you'd think it had any right to be) are on this. I'll listen to them all again though. Cash is amazing
Lot of nostalgia with this one, so it's hard to rate objectively. I have a feeling that syd barret era pink floyd is probably more to my liking but I don't know it as well as this, which is just an all time great album. Love how the songs bleed into each other on this.
Merge is really reliable for creative gems. Love that this gets lumped in as alt country, though the album is more 70s AM with R&B on it, but there is slide guitar a couple times. I'd describe this album more like Beck's Deborah played straight, but it's pretty unclassifiable and I can see how Lambchop rewards repeat listening. Up with the People and Grumpus are bigger hits if you can say that on the album and deservedly so. Maybe me sample more of his discography based on the interest this perked and he's definitely a creative savant. Works well that he shares the label with Torres whom I prefer to about anything else lately.
Norwegian Wood and I'm looking through You are my favorite songs on this. It's not as good as sgt pepper in my mind but it looks like they're getting a bit more weird psychedelic stuff on here, but it's just in little accoutrements to the songs. Harrison songs are good, it's a better Ringo one than I would have expected. I'm leaning to a 4 or 4.5 but anticipate I'll come back and rate it higher over time.
All time great, makes stuff I rated as high seem like I was being too generous earlier. Sway stood out this time to me, but I like it all so much (nb: dead flowers is only song that I'd maybe be fine without hearing every time I run through this album).
3.5, the title track does some cool progressions, starts out as a 70s am radio cri de coeur that is one of the album vibes throughout. Last two tracks and jet are my favorites on it.
One of my all-time favorites (I very slightly prefer the first three Echo albums and the way the songs play with dissonance to other stuff by them but love their whole career). Villier's Terrace piano part and the Happy Death Men trumpets stood out to me in this listen through. That and Will Sargeant! He's such as virtuoso, doing rhythm guitar things that invite bits of more minimal space into the songs along with unexpected lead guitar licks all over on this album.
High school me wants to rate this so high. Love early blur so much, but there are a few songs that miss a bit on the record. Advert is just awesome on relisten. Blue Jeans, Star shaped, miss america have raised in my estimation. still like the hits. our local radio station would only play chemical world from blur when I was a teenager, not there's no other way, nothing from parklife. Very weird that was. Except they carried the rock-over-london show on sunday nights at 11pm and I heard a live sunday sunday rendition. 4/5 (high school me says 500000000000000/5)
Love Blue Nile. Some is really reminiscent of the melody licks and instrumentation of sadder songs of Peter Gabriel, "Easter parade" reminds me of "here comes the flood" for example. Both just a very unique emotion evoked and something to sit with. I love Stay so much. It seems to me that it's a song steeped in regret more than hope, like the promise one should have made to someone who's already departed. But that could be just a personal interpretation given when I found and obsessively listened on repeat to this song in my own biography...sigh.
Must be something Scottish to this kind of pop that I find so rewarding.
Probably 4.5, but maybe 5. I like the timpani and orchestrations a lot in this. I'm waiting for the day has the amazing outro "you don't think..." repetition and "i know there's an answer" are the two songs I didn't know as well that hit me this time. Sloop John B is so great (I have it intertwined in my memory with Okkervill River's "John Allyn Smith Sails" by now due to my listening habits. And I love the John B <> John Berryman signifier in that song).
It's good for a bootleg, and it captures a moment that's historic in some sense (although I'd think the Newport Festival rock set is where it really started, and, consequently, I wish Maggie's Farm was on this too). More curiosity with it for me than feeling like it's essential Dylan
It's good. Some super sharp discomfitting lyrics. The punker stuff I like more though. The hits are understandable but the stuff I like most seems like Karen O could have mainlined this for years so Fever to Tell didn't have as many misses. Will come back to listen more.
Pretty great stuff in here. I imagine it sounded revolutionary when it came out (hence Christgau) but the influence it's had on a lot of what came after makes it sound like a lot of other things to my ears. I may be hard on stuff that comes out of california as a rule.
Rockin' around (with you), the wild one, forever, and especially Mystery man I liked a lot. Some of it seems like they're working toward an idea of rocknroll more than just writing songs that call themselves into existence. Other Petty stuff seems more urgent somehow than this first album, but it's good.
An all time great album
Liked el condor pasa a lot this pass. Great songs on this (cecilia, boxer, only living boy in new york). Bridge is such a huge song but I like other stuff more on this.
World is Yours, Represent, NY state of mind are my favorites but this a masterpiece. Need more stars
Super good at what he does, it seems like hyperactive comedy that is being served up with high degree of difficulty rhyming. I'm impressed with the talent evident early on while admitting that some other hiphop (90s-2000s New York stuff mainly) is really the stuff I like.
Bought this when it came out, but didn't spend enough time with it, besides history song which worked its way into many play lists. Happy to give the whole thing more of its due. Good to great. Green fields, herculean, nature springs, and the title track were best for me on this listen.
Interesting, a couple songs I liked but mostly felt a bit less memorable to me as a record. Based on the description I was hoping for something a bit more like Cafe Tacuba, but it's a much more divergent mix of influences on it.
Love the first four echo albums. This one is more orchestral and the production is lusher which I think they never pulled back from as they moved forward, but so much cool stuff on this. Probably the most hooky Echo album, nonsense lyrics and all (cuh cuh cabbage). My kingdom I swear starts with an opening that was an influence of Ian Broudie pre-lightning seeds, but I guess this album he didn't produce. Once again, Will Sargeant is just an absolute genius.
This is pretty good. It starts out perhaps just a bit less compelling, but builds steam as it progresses. Some of that impression may be that I wasn't ready to listen to low-key edm in the beginning but the quality and creativity shine through here. I was in once the portishead remix hit. Weatherall did some great stuff.
Wild how Eddie Van Halen seems fully in control of powers already on this album. Some cool stuff. David Lee Roth seems not quite as magnetic here. Compared to later stuff where you appreciate what he's doing this seems a little sedate from him. Guitar solos lined the music of my youth, and i appreciate how much points to this. EVH
An endurable classic. always sounds as good as the first day you heard it
Kind of wild amalgam of what the Kinks do and sound like. Weirder here though. Victoria I knew not much else. Brainwashed is A+ and the sheer British oddness of She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina is kind of great. There is so much Kinks and I've listened to a lot so I was surprised so much of this was new to me. Good, but not my favorite of theirs
Love this
all time favorite album
Their best album probably.
Needs more listens but it's great
Was thinking four but it's so much good elton, not quite tumbleweed but what is
My favorite Bob Dylan album, angry, funny, worth re-listening
Catchy and great. Keyboard hooks with more of a dark wave atmosphere than stuff that came before. I treated them more like a hits band than an album band (honestly speak and spell and violator were listened to a lot in my youth though), and this one shows that I should have dived into the fuller material much earlier. I should repeat listen to this more.
Warrants a re-listen
Pretty fun, shaggy, party voodoo.
