There are some good hooks here and there, and “All My Friends” is a great jam, but overall it’s just not really my thing and doesn’t change my view of this band as overrated.
As far as over-indulgent indie rock goes, it’s pretty great. Kinda wrote the book on it.
This is a challenging album to write about succinctly. It simultaneously excites and frustrates me. I can especially see in hindsight that at the time, the industry machine was 110% all in on Soundgarden. Cornell was viewed as the next golden child - and looking at the trajectory of his career and how he gradually popped himself out more, it’s clear he bought into that somewhat. But with how STRANGE of a record this is, it kinda surprises me how backed it was…it definitely had hits ready to go, but songs like “my wave” had this hit potential that was drenched in weird arrangements and time signatures. It was rad, but especially with the mega hit, it ended up all seeming SO commercialized and it just all creates this odd stir of emotions in me considering how off-kilter and experimental the album is as a whole. But lots of good stuff on here - Ben Shepherd doesn’t get enough credit for his contributions, which really make the album feel alive, albeit maybe a living thing you don’t want to fuck with.
The three proper Nick Drake records are all classics in different ways, each expressing a subtly different nuance of folk rock. The middle child has always put up a good fight for favorite. The full band arrangements are super cool and make me wish he would have had more of a chance to be consistently backed by a traditional band in a live setting, and to really get comfortable with that. Not that he ever could get comfortable, but it could have been an opportunity for him to come into his own a bit more.
R.E.M is a top-5 band for me, and this album was a key player in making that happen. After getting into them thru Out of Time and Automatic for the People, Document was my first step into their back catalog and my realization that this “new band” I loved had a storied and immensely strong musical history. “Finest Worksong” is indeed one of their finest hours; “End of the World” and “The One I Love” are perfect, massive singles; “Disturbance at the Heron House” is great; “King of Birds” and the Wire cover are cool, too. Most of the other songs aren’t bad, just not my faves from the band by a stretch. Again, this record helped catapult me into assured R.E.M. fandom, but in hindsight Automatic, Murmur, and Life’s Rich Pageant all best it for me. Document is still a great record, tho. That’s how great of a band R.E.M. was, and still is.
A more commercial turn from their previous, stellar album Slave Ambient, Lost in the Dream is still a great example of an album which blew a band up majorly, but still wins in so many ways artistically. There’s just too much that feels familiar about The War On Drugs for them not to be huge.
Bruce brings me some joy and a lot of nostalgia, but even though I’ve listened to him basically my whole life, I’d still consider myself a casual fan. Born To Run is his second album with the E Street Band and probably his definitive statement with that group - it’s a representation of that point when everything about them was on fire. So you can definitely feel that magic on some levels, but as is usually the case with me and the Boss, his songwriting doesn’t check all of my boxes. I enjoy it when artists get a little more whimsical and freewheeling with their imaginations.
