Blurred snapshots from a slow-motion train wreck. Listening today, in a far different musical landscape than 2006, the freshness of the approach and genre is not so readily apparent, but that makes the pain from which the music emerged more immediate.
The well known hits still play well and the lesser known title track shines when put into it's context. The overall derivative approach, simply borrowing riffs, hooks and melodies from older music, is also more in your face when you hear all the songs together. Some of the music feels like you walked into a set halfway through a song and then wandered back out, with things feeling slightly incomplete.
Overall, knowing that she would die just a few years later, the album hits slightly different.
I think we have to call a spade a spade, Jobim was an incel. Well, at least, much like "80s movie hijinks were mostly just rape" these faded post WW2 tropes play much differently today.
This also feels like the classic cash grab. Maybe it's just my strong dislike for the dinner jacket schmaltz that came to dominate the tail end of big band, but the whole thing feels kinda mailed in.
As someone who has waxed rhapsodic over the likes of The Chieftains and The Milk Carton Kids, I was expecting to have this album make a bigger impression. I think it’s just a reminder that those who pave the way aren’t those who go the farthest or the fastest.
I think this album played better as part of a burgeoning folk movement. Put another way, if I was smoking medicinal herbs and dancing with mostly naked women, or could imaging doing it anymore, I’d like this album a lot more.
All that said, you can see the foundation being lain, despite the album's title and Sailor's Life is a song I could see returning to.
It's like Judas Priest, but without most of the good stuff, and mixed to sound like it was recorded in any empty underground garage with a single mic a couple of levels away. Wikipedia says it's an extremely influential album for various sub-genres of metal. Good to know (so I can avoid those sub-genres). Honestly, much like the sound mix, each song sorta blended together into a muddy pit. I actually completely missed the transition from "Black Metal" into "To Hell and Back" and yet didn't realize I was listening to a different song.
What's up with the last song on the album being called "At War With Satan (Preview)"? And it fades out mid-song? Is it like an after the end-credits scene at the end of a Marvel movie that sets up the next one?
I did find the song Teacher's Pet interesting and I'm glad Van Halen "payed homage" to it and made a much, much better version. (if you tell me they hadn't heard this song, I call BS) .
For whoever this hits in the right place, I'm glad it exists, but it's not for me.
An interesting mix of styles and a number of elements that seem well before their time, seeming to predict much later developments in rap. Many of the lyrics leave me in a state of confusion. Can a song that says, of Stevie Wonder, "when we dream of you,
we believe anything that you see" be something other than, if not parody, at least joking? Other songs seem so over the top as to surely be parody, but apparently that is not what the intended. It's hard to square.
Overall, well executed, funky and listenable.
A gutteral cry of pain and righteous anger. You can clearly here that they come out of waters that gave us acts like Green Day and The Smashing Pumpkins. They have the straightforward drive and under produced sound of a post punk, but also some of the use of tone and effect that is so noticeable in the Pumpkins.
The album came out in 1994, and Foo Fighters formed that same year, and boy do the first 3 or 4 tracks on the album sound like something Grohl et. al. drew from. I'm almost sure to revisit this album, as a listen through with the lyrics in front of me is sure to bear some fruit.
I can easily see not sticking this one through. It definitely has the feel of that one guy in college whose name was Steven but wore black turtlenecks and introduced himself as Dieter before his one man backed by boom box set at the open mic. The album seems to open in a way as to make itself hard to listen to, with an intentional discordancy and trying to mask the broad technical competence of the musicians. Although, I'm not sure anyone in the band can actually sing.
Still, there is definitely something *there* right from the beginning. You can see why they were influential, even if you don't understand why they'd be popular enough to actually sell records.
By the time I got to the second to last track, I went "Of course they are going to have a song that's really just 4 nearly unconnected snippets that's just named for each of the 4 members of the band. And then they are going to end with an instrumental with 5 seconds of dead air in the middle. It makes perfect sense."
I can't really even rate this properly. I think if I was in the right head space I'd probably listen to it on loop for days. Other times I'd turn it off instantly right after I threw up in my mouth a little.
I guess that makes it a 3, but it's a very confused 3. Probably what they were going for, a strongly held ambivalence.
I think the title to one of the songs might have been "Sounds Like All The Others". It's hard to remember as the whole album bleads together. It's all fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far. Listening to American Idiot and The Undertones back to back really brought the relative unambitious nature of this into sharp focus.
I'm not really familiar with the overall rap scene, but I know this isn't typical. I really just don't know what to make of it. If you told me these were songs written when Dr. Octagon was, what, 8 or 9? It would make total sense. There is something there, and it's bizarrely surreal, but it's also obsessed with the things kids get obsessed with when they learn about sex, but haven't hit puberty yet. I also vaguely wonder if he was committed to a psych ward for a while.
Also, was Andre 3000 a hit of this album as a kid or something? Maybe the year 3000 just fits well into rap lyrics? This album definitely encourage my tendency to have random thoughts float in my head.
Not quite sure where to go with this one. I was looming forward to it, and ended up quite disappointed. Very little variety in structure, tone, chord progression, etc. The singer apparently hasn't found a note he can't sing flat. The lead guitarist doesn't seem interested in keeping his instrument in tune. But, you can still see why some will think highly of them.
It's only Poledo, the second to last song on the album that brings something new to the table, but it's too little too late. And then just Like Heaven really highlights the defincies in their songwriting.
Competent pop rock that hits all the points you expect pop rock to hit. But there is a trend, that becomes a maddening tease, of opening as if there are about to become something else entirely, something much, much better.
"Say Anything" is a good example of this. The first two instrumental bars and then the first two vocal bars seem to presage an homage to Pink Floyd, and then it just drops into the standard pop rock groove. After that the song periodically teases us with what it could have been, but you still end up with blue balls at the end.
Still, it's highly listenable, at least one song at a time. I just end up wishing she was writing for a different band, one that would push for a rougher, grittier, more challenging sound.
"I've Had It" is the best song on the album, IMO. I feel like most of the songs started off as good as that one was all through and I just wish they had payed off.
So, a 3 that makes me wish for what could have been.
Definitive 80s rock. Not a bad track on the album, but the deeper cuts mostly aren't buried treasures. Gods of War is probably the "best of the rest". Hard to shake the feeling that Hysteria and Love Bites are two versions of the same song, but if it ain't broke don't fix it?
Definitely not my favorite genre or artist of the 80s, but the star power on display is undeniable.
I guess there is some goodness in here, and apparently they actually coined the term "psychedelic rock". When I looked that up, I found out that apparently one of the instruments is ... electric jug? Had to go back and figure out where that came in. Kinda cool to have created that weird arpegiated synth sound with a jug.
Still, as influential as I'm sure they were, it all sounds too crude and unpolished to my ear. It makes sense that they were influential. It's good to hear the album as an important development, but I'm not likely to return to it.
I think the album builds as it goes forward. The first few songs aren't much to write home about, but as we progress through things keep getting better. The back half of the album is really solid IMO.
I loved the fact that they had a distinct sound, but quite a lot of variety in that sound from song to song. The lyrical content was intriguing. Just a bunch of little touches all through out that make me want to return to this album in the near future.
I particularly liked "Remember Me" which turns a bunch of "old lover" tropes sideways to write a song about a friend who has a new partner and just isn't hanging out any more. I also really liked Dirty Dancehall which had a sorta Morphine adjacent sound.
On my scale this is probably in between a 3 and 4. It's not quite impactful enough to be a 4, but I'm more likely to go back to it than I would a 3. So 4 stars, because it's too strong a 3 to be rated a 3.
Really like this. Between a 3 and a 4 for me. I had a whole long write up and the website yoinked my review. I'll just say I would have absolutely worn this out in my teen years, but hearing for the first time as a much older me, it hits different. On the weaker side between 3 and 4, so I'll give at a 3, but I'm likely to return to it at some point. Definitely wouldn't switch the station if it showed up.
Love this. The Police in all that they are, by which I mean not merely an extension of Sting's songwriting. You can clearly hear the difference between the songs written only by Sting, those written by the group, and the ones written by Copeland.
There is a reason why the hits were mostly Sting, but I still love the whole package.
You've heard it said, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Well in this case the whole is *less* than the sum of its parts. Each song is a small glittering jewel, finely cut, with Frank at the height of his power. He makes each note and phrase expressive and rich with emotion. He doesn't miss anything.
Each song is excellently written. The band puts just the proper bit of polish on it all. All of it is a finely tailored tuxedo, worn to the the best restaurant, with exquisite food.
But the table is set for one, and the only courses they serve is the aperitif. By the end you are drunk, saf and hungry for something else.
The single emotional note of the album is, I'm sure, intentional. Reflecting a certain melancholy for those who went through the war, perhaps, or anyone who has loved and lost. But by the end I just wanted the couple to finally get back together. That's how these show tunes are supposed to work, aren't they?
I quite liked this. Lots of smooth swagger. Steely Dan-esque, mostly without the singing. I'm not always in the mood for this flavor of smooth jazz, but it certainly hits that spot.
What to do with this one? I can understand why Kanye has been lauded. There are moments of ambition, even genuis, but I feel like mostly he's mostly getting graded on a curve, merely for stretching the genre.
It all feels a tad self-indulgent, which I guess is all part of the rap game, but still. I found Runaway to be the most interesting song, and perhaps mostly because it's a moment of introspection, perhaps clarity, where Kanye can see the cliff he eventually ends up going over. When he tells you to run away, he's not lying.
And, as much as I would like, I can't really separate the art from the artist. It colors it all, and I'd prefer not to know anything more about his fantasies, dark or otherwise.
