God, make it stop! Morriseys maudlin lyrics and droning voice over the pedestrian backing music was too much…I couldn’t make it through…Morrisey is musical murder.
I remember this album from when it dropped. I listened to it religiously for a short time, after which it slowly receded to the back of my CD collection, where it would remain if I hadn’t traded it in for Dungeon and Dragons supplies at our local second hand everything store. After another listen, I have no regrets.
The groundwork for so much of what was to come, from samples of ‘Le Freak’, to Donovan frankenreiter and the “Happy Feet” soundtrack from ‘Happy Man’, to just about every pop song that we love to hate on but secretly love at some level.
Aptly named. This album is boring on first listen…and on all subsequent listens, I’m sure. Could be the soundtrack to a movie made by third graders, starring their cats, doing nothing. If this is Bowie drug-free, we are now better informed as to why musicians eat pills until they explode.
This is a revelation! The musicianship is incredible; the arrangements wonderfully complex; and the shifting styles disorienting like a carnival ride - it all left me a bit breathless and joyous in a bit of a new way. I could do without the masturbatory 70s guitar solos (he was always ahead of his time!) from the first two songs, but overall an ever-shifting landscape of challenging musical joymanship! Not all at what I expected from the fella who in my childhood memory would’ve otherwise forever have been the “don’t eat yellow snow” guy….
Wow! Frank Ocean seems to fill that beauty-fusion space in between didactic, rhyme driven rap and melody driven pop/rock that so few have been able to populate. Lest I say his name, he’s like a Kayne with something to say. Lyrics like “Nah, I’m lying…down” from “Thinkin’ About You” (with such impeccable timing) and the entirety of “Crack Rock” and “Sweet Life” are art, allowing an inside view and understanding of another subjective reality.
Man, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Really, people literally do not make albums like this now. Storytelling soul is gone.indeed, I think soul music is gone, atomized into R&B, HipHop, Funk, even Singer-Songwriter, molecules-to-the-universe-gone-but-not-forgotten gone. I don’t necessarily love the music, but I long for the time and the sociocultural context that welcomed this music. When I complete my Time Machine, it’s the 70s or bust…
Wow, OutKast is more than “Hey Ya”?! ‘Stankonia’ is pretty okay, but it led me down the OutKast rabbit hole, music and videos, and I popped back out with a new group of songs to take along on my journey. The songs are wonderfully variable musically, and thematically and the videos are clearly done by a manic synesthete on acid, and they take the experience that is OutKast to a newer, even better place. OutKast is a beast that ate Robert Johnson and Grandmaster Flash and the Everly Brothers and nibbled on Isaac Hayes and Spike Jones and (weirdly) Flight of the Conchords (or more likely they nibbled on OutKast).
It’s crazy that this album, Willie’s “Red Headed Stranger”, Zappa’s “Hot Rats”, and Hayes “Hot Buttered Soul” came from the same era - a testament that this is a wonderful world! Mostly knowing Zeppelin from their hits as singles, this album sounds to me like an album Led Zeppelin took inspiration from to make the real Led Zeppelin albums.
Interstitial style, apparently from the origin. “I could make that” stuff that you really couldn’t.
I couldn’t get through this album. This used to be my wheelhouse, but I found this, honestly, lyrically, musically and spiritually, empty. I like to believe that I’m always looking forward and waiting for new things to amaze me - this helps me to see that I’ve moved on past vapid, navel gazing, Yawn Rock.
Conceptually interesting tapestry of musical styles, with some great drumming, but it left me flat overall. I think I just had the experience my kids have when I have them listen to a piece of seminal music that has been taken further over the intervening time. If they can appreciate the pedigree, it’s usually still a review of “Meh”. Did anyone else have sense that they were listening to the soundtrack album for the Bollywood remake of “Blade Runner”?
I have a confession to make : despite growing up in a hick town in the 1980s, I have NEVER listened to Iron Maiden! I was too busy with Phil Collins and Bryan Adams and Friday Night videos and didn’t turn my attention to them, as I thought they were heavy metal and I didn’t do heavy metal (that was those guys in the 3/4 sleeve rock T-shirts with that creepy Eddie splashed on the front). Object lesson in staying in your lane and ‘finding’ only those cultural bits that look familiar. Too bad for me - they’re pretty okay, with lots of Van Halen and even Chili Peppers guitar riffs and lyrics and stage antics tame by subsequent standards. I probably won’t seek them out too often, but I won’t turn away from them so quickly next time either.
Lush and heavy (some of the guitar work is ‘heavier’ in its way than the guitar on the recent Iron Maiden album, again showing the shifting landscape of style and also likely pointing out some of Corgans influences). I came to The Pumpkins with the next album, so this one has no emotional resonance for me. It’s good musically but not really my thing. But it did lead me back to Fugazi and some other “if you like this, then you’ll like this” bands that Henry then walked in on and we had a 90s awakening for him, so once again every melancholy cloud has a silver Offspring/Fugazi/ Everclear lining.
Ahhh, the master of blue-eyed soul. I do love me some Van the Man, that love child of James Brown and James Taylor. I was on a mountain biking trip in the summer of 1989 in Alberta with my uncle and a couple of family friends. We had covered a lot of altitude and miles before making camp for the night in the middle of nowhere under the big western sky, like four Spandex cowboys. The campfire was on the go when the fellas realized that they’d lost their hash somewhere along the way! Off they went, eventually finding it against the odds. They were in a celebratory mood (and high as f#&k) and put on some music to play one-legged “Pick up the Bag”, leading me to ask “Who’s this?”. They were aghast that I’d never heard - of course - Van Morrison. They were actually mad at my father for never having showed me the Way of the Van. And he’s been along for my ride ever since, in and out, on and off, but always there somewhere. Not sure I dig his live stuff as much as his studio work, but pulling out a Van album off the shelf now and then is always welcome.
Never heard of them. Sounds like 1970s guitar rock without a lot to distinguish it.
Apparently a classic, but I found this a hard listen. While I did appreciate the spirit of experimentation that Cage and Reed brought to the songs, they often fell flat beyond that. “Heroin” did portray what I would imagine doing horse in the 60s felt like, which is an artistic triumph. And “Sunday Morning” is a straight up 60s classic. But Nico’s vocals are nothing but jarring and the music is often flat as is the mood it brings. I give it two bananas
Fantastic! Musically and lyrically and atmospherically a revelation, again. Yet another album from an artist who I’ve heard of but haven’t listened to previously and now will make my way through their oeuvre. Listenable yet affecting from start to finish, Stephens manages to do that thing that true artists do, making the whole more than the seeming sum of the parts.
This album met all of my expectations. Enough said. Oh…and my imagination was wandering around (perhaps trying to escape?!) whilst sort of listening to JT (he asked me to call him that somewhere in there) and I thought: Art. Really. Hopefully there’s a reason why we make this sort of music. Maybe we’ll one day see the ships filling the skies over our cities and our nukes will be useless and we’ll face annihilation from our alien overlords. Failing force, we attempt to soothe them with our humanity, in efforts to have them spare us at least that. Beethoven. Makes their ears bleed. Picasso. Screaming for hours after. Fellini. Anger after befuddlement (even them). Shakespeare. Intrigued, but let down after discovering he ghost wrote. Then, jogs by a 40 something New Yorker who doesn’t give a fuck that the aliens have come for us, she needs to get her run in, as she has for everyday since 2002. Intrigued, one of the ships beams her up to probe just what’s up with her, self-betterment in the face of certain death and all. And what’s on her Walkman but her favorite album, JTs “Justified”. They are soothed. The album perfectly syncs with their harmonic centres, releasing waves of endocannibinoids and dopamine, easing them into a state a bliss they’ve never before known. All thoughts of domination and war evaporate in this “Timberlake state”. Prime directives rewired, they now heed only one thought: find this Tim-ber-lake. Once they figure out Facebook, it’s not a problem and soon they’re whisking JT away beyond the edge of the known universe. Who knew that inside every alien is a latent teenage girl, silently screaming for constant hits of misogynist-lite boy band confection. In the end, we all win.
Thanks to Jon’s generous text analysis of two weeks ago, I didn’t just discount this album right away - I considered why, then discounted it. At the risk of sounding xenophobic, I believe that I have different expectations of non-English artists. I press ‘play’ on albums from non-Western climes and of different languages with an excited expectation of discovery of a new-to-me ‘otherness’. I’m looking for expansion, even just a little. This album was 70s soft pop with lyrics, while sonorous in a Romance language, I couldn’t appreciate beyond feeling like Captain & Tennille had learned Spanish in a futile attempt to seem less bland.
Unexpectedly cool proto electronica from what would’ve likely been another Simple Minds or Big Country if one of their dads didn’t own a TV repair shop or the like. 8-bit drum machines and an easy hand on the rest of it and somehow it’s transporting like Trainspotting. Huh
I think I’m a prude. I don’t really admire Winehouse’s bad person (woke man that I am) style (and substance). The musicianship is top-rate, as per her last album, and she’s undeniably one of the finest of her generation, but her message is medium-rate (even though it’s true, hence me being a prude and not wanting to look straight at the burning sun of her talent and addiction and self-destruction). This music reflecting self stuff is a hard business!
I can’t…I just can’t…anything but The Cure.
Proto-rock’n’roll by an alcoholic pedophile and yet one of the best live albums of all! Talk about separating then artist from the art. Crazy world. The rawness and energy and the German crowd unironically chanting “Jerry” is dizzying, even 60 years later. With every nuance examined and every commodity, including music, overanalyzed and pre-judged upon its presentation to us, can we still have experiences like this? I hope so.
Some highlights and bright bits musically but overall I found this tepid. Cognitively I can see this may be important in the transition through the 90s-today, but it leaves my soul asking me to get back to music with feeling, please (my soul has good manners). I’ll post this in my conversational brain under “music to pull out so that my decade(s) younger friends think I’m still relevant”. And how the fu k do these guys have 80x more listeners than Ozomatli?! If there was a “2.5” rating, but 3 it is
(Dancing Face Emoji) Where did they come from?! And why have I never heard them before now?! And how did they mash up those musics and those messages and make it work?! And what have they done to my need to categorize musical styles?! And how can I see them live?! And am I the first person to ever have their mind blown by Ozomatli while making bread and butter pickles?! They’ve raised so many questions…
I also thought I liked the Pixies, but I really felt this album was best left to my 90s self. My 2020s self has moved on from what now seems like noise music gone to hell in the hands of musician wannabes.
Brilliant. Now this challenged my listening in the right ways : modal style, rhythmic inconsistency, un-landing melodies, not a lyric in sight but saying a lot, unpredictable interplay of instruments. I could only aspire to get to the point of playing that you can throw away the rules and make up your own as you go! I suppose this is the music that Jerry Lee Lewis was saying “fu k that shit” to, but I’ve made a place for them both…I’ll just make sure they don’t get seated side by side or they might get into it….
Once again proving that albums are a creature apart from our current culture of songs as singles, not part of a whole (maybe this reflects the general trend towards individuality that we presently live with?). I do love me some Stones, and ‘Sweet Virginia’ marries up my country leanings with crunchy blues guitar as well as any song out there, but it was the ‘other songs’ that grabbed me here, especially “Shine a Light” and “I Just Want to See His Face”. Maybe Mick and Keef felt they needed some saving - and they were probably right.
This endeavour keeps pushing me beyond my listening history. Weather Report is to Miles Davis what Any Winehouse is to Aretha Franklin : solid music without the same emotional depth. This did grow on me through the listen, but I’m sticking with my first impression : maybe jazz doesn’t need that 80s synth sound.
I was there for this music at the start, but, despite Annie Lennox’s luscious vocal tone, I’m not sure I’m there for it now.
Classic, rock solid foundational soul from THAT VOICE! This is ‘comfort music’ (even though I have no particular personal emotional history with it).
Green eggs and ham. I do like Fiona Apple, Sam I am. Always took her for the cut rate Alanis, but what a voice, great musicians and strong songwriting and performance. Damn.
I guess now we know the answer to that age old question : “If you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of electric guitars, what do they make?” A Stooges album.
Interesting, as I’d never listened to this band other than incidentally. I read that they were meant to be as influential on subsequent music, particularly Alt Country, as another band of their era, the Beatles. I just didn’t hear it here. I think some of the issue was production, as the mix often sound wrong to my ears. But mostly I just don’t connect with their style nor with their songwriting. ‘My Back Pages’ is nice and my favorite (at least before it devolved into a meander on the sitar), wasn’t even on the main album, ‘Old John Robertson’.
I’ve never listened to an entire Talking Heads album up to now. The music was more intriguing than I expected, but David Byrne sounds like Max Headroom after a few too many rum and Cokes for most of the album. I think I’ll never listen to another entire Talking Heads album again.
I’m always surprised when I listen to an Al um by an artist whose oeuvre I think I know top to bottom, only to realize that I really just know their big songs and an album or two that I’ve put the time into. Not surprisingly, I felt that with “On the Beach”. “For the Turnstiles” and “Walk On” are great songs all day, every day, but I was pleased to ‘discover’ “See the Sky About to Rain”, which is been completely without prior. Aside - did anyone else notice that Wikipedia lists Neil as a “Canadian-American” musician. You know you’ve made it to the top when America lies to call you their own! I’d say 3.5, but gave 4 so Neil remembers where he’s from…
Deep Purple remain a mystery to me, from the name, to the fandom, to why the music should impress, to asking whether they would maintain relevance at all were it not for “the riff” (amazing how one piece of one song can ‘make’ a music career…)
Man, as much as I love Tom Waits, he can be challenging. Bone Machine seems to be (literally) shouting “wake up!!” to the collective pop music imbibing masses. This entire exercise for me has been about getting outside known musical lanes, even with artists I think I ‘know’. Bone Machine has no lane, as it careens through the aural wilderness, daring us to hang on as long as we can. I probably won’t go back to it often, but I know it’s there when I need a musical slap in the face.
Reminds me so much that I’m in my mid-50s. And that I’m not gangster (yes, I said ‘gangst-ER’, because my spellcheck won’t let me write ‘gangsta’, because even my phone knows that i can’t like 50 Cent, even if I give it the old college (see!) try).
Fucking awesome. I thought these guys were just Bjorkers-on for that other Icelandic music sensation, but they’re expansively talented, wide ranging musical silkworms, ingesting other musical forms and spinning them out into something…better. I love the ambient soundscapes, the haunting vocals and the journey of the album as a map to their musical interworld. Consider Sigur Ros ‘found’ by this guy.
I’m sure, as he tooted his tooter, Miles Davis was self-actualizing (his mind leaving his body behind to do its thing) himself as a craftsman, turning simple ingredients into so much more than the sum of their parts, ‘cause Miles Davis is a near-perfect woodworking soundtrack.
Bjork defies words, so just - Fantastic!
Going into this listen with low expectations, I was blown away. What a powerful, take-no-bullshit approach to musical protest and empowerment. Why have I never heard this? Why haven’t we progressed much at all, keeping her women-forward message still oh so relevant, 20+ years later? What do I do every day to help evolve our society to make it unneeded? Do I like reggaeton? Tune in next week for more existential angst brought on by powerful music…
To quote my favorite Mel Brooks movie : “Piss boy, bring the bucket!”.
Meh Meh Meh. I was excited at the last song I heard, but then I realized it was Beck, spun off the end of the album by the Spotify algorithm.
Ahhh, comfortable rock’n’roll of my youth. This is as stereotypical of the 70s Springsteen/Jackson Browne/Tom Petty trifecta as it gets. “American Girl” is my standout here, and I must admit not much else other than the driving-down-the-highway vibe stays with me after the first listen. But I know how much good stuff is on the way from TP, so I’ll give him a 3 for his out-the-gate effort…
Man, is this a gospel album or what? If anyone else, even Dylan, mentioned the Creator as often as Marley does here, I’d be tuning out in no time. But…somehow he mixes the reggae guitar chunk that I don’t really like; religious overtones that I don’t really share; and lyrics that I can’t always understand…and he makes it awesome! And how many albums finish so strong on the back half? Marley could write cereal jingles and they’d be profound hits, I expect.
I don’t know. Seems Madonna’s for dancing, not for listening. I don’t dance anymore. So, for me, the time of Madonna has passed.
There was a time when I would drive around in my buddy’s 5.0 mustang with AC/DC shouting to the world out the windows for us. I had a 3/4 sleeve Tshirt and knew the words to more of the songs than I took the time to hear the words of. Fuck, these guys are assholes! What a pack of misogynist jerks I see them as now. I’m embarrassed that I suggested my kids listen to them, though I guess they are now an object lesson in how not to be, the “before” in a cultural shitt that has caused a chasm that their music would do well to disappear deepen into (sorry, Jon, ended that sentence with a preposition). Ahh, but to have put that guitar playing to work for good not for evil…
Man, I really want to love Sade, but all I can muster is to like Sade. Her sultry voice, her jazz-tinged arrangements, her solid musicians, her good songwriting is impressive, it just doesn’t speak to my musical soul.
This is a nice album, I especially enjoyed “High tide or low tide”, which was new to me (i think because it doesn’t have the staccato reggae guitar that I just can’t learn to love), but it’s not one that I’d head back to anytime soon.
Didn’t even have to listen to this one to say that it’s seminal in my understanding of music and the feeling that it brings. It was sort of my “British Invasion”. Not a big fan anymore either, but this album stands shoulders above most from any era.
I’m still a ‘no’, maybe even a ‘no,no,no’ to the Stooges. It might be a bridge across musical eras, it might be the start of something beautiful to some, it might be lightning in a jar, but not to my ears. Sorry Iggy (but I suspect you’re a nihilist, so surely you don’t care either way…)
Hmmm. This alt-country stuff is supposed to be my wheelhouse, but I find this pretty ‘blah’. Maybe the roots of the music I still love is in there, and thanks to gene clark for that, but I’m going to keep looking ahead and not behind on this one.
After the title track, which is an undeniable classic, I found this album a weird mashup of non-Beatles songs. Maybe that was the point, but Lennon doesn’t so barrelhouse or blues or anything else so well. Interest g to watch icons find (lose?) their way after jumping off their pinnacles.
I didn’t much by like our last TH album but this one had something better about it. The musicianship is so stellar, David Byrnes singing is less rigid and willfully staccato, and the songs are interesting.
More love for OutKast. This album is a crazy mess of talent, momentum and vanity, but its highlights (for me, mostly in the middle of the second half) are high enough that I’ll keep going back, albeit for curated listens. I’d do 3.5 but momentum takes them to a 4
I can only imagine that this album was shockingly unlike anything else that dropped in 1980, so much so that it didn’t register the way it ought’ve. I always say, and this album only serves to put bricks in this wall, that Tom waits is the musical auter of his era and that his is the music that will escape the orbit of the current, spinning off to be what reps his time. I mean… “There’s no such thing as the Devil, that’s just God when he’s drunk”, “I shot the morning in the back with my Red Wings on, told the sun it better go back down”…From the first notes this album is gritty America of any age. Fucking fantastic!
I also thought Brian Eno was on my no-fly list, but his was pretty okay. His melodic sense is sound and he certainly got rhythm and his boundary-pushing is near-constant and interesting. Breaking down preconceptions, I give you…Eno.
Hard to beat “Last Night” and “Someday” as classics in the jangle punk genre. When I think ‘I do like the Strokes’, I now believe myself to be saying hat I like those songs. The rest of the album, to quote Osama, let me drift off, disinterested. But in the rock world, 2 out of 11 will get you 3 out of 5
I agree. Stevie is the man! I love Stevie and would put him at the pinnacle of my musical heroes, so I’m biased, but this is a solid album in all ways, even more impressive as the start of his ‘genius period’ after his start as child prodigy (which so many never successfully escape from). I must say I prefer Funky Stevie to maudlin Stevie, but Funky Stevie carries so much weight that maudlin Stevie can get a pass.
Hmmm. How do you say anything bad about Beyoncé? And her crew? Catchy stuff, no doubt, but empty of anything interesting for my ears.
Never heard of the guys before, despite their ‘Beach Boys-meet-Wilco’ sound and vibe. I love the lead singers voice and tone, but everything else is pretty pedestrian. The Thrills is gone for me.
First listen : interesting and quirky. Second listen (with Henry, who has some experience listening to them): what the hell?! I’ve heard these guys described as the forerunners of all electronic music, as the ‘next Beatles’ (really!), compared to the Beach Boys, as the cutting edge of the future of pop. To me, they sound like the AV squad at a 1970s high school got their hands on a Vic 20 and programmed the soundtrack to the drama club production of “I Love my Calculator!” while everyone else was drinking before the Friday night school dance.
I love these old raw recordings! You can hear all the growls and flaws and it’s somehow better for that. I was really hoping to find a new favourite, but I guess the best stuff does pass through the filter of time for a reason. I’m going to do the classic Price is Right move on Osama and bid 1 higher : 4
I sort of lost track of Nirvana between ‘Nevermind’ and the Unplugged album, so ‘In Utero’ isn’t in my nostalgia wheelhouse. And, apparently I’m an old fuddy-dud who just likes the hits, because, to me last night in my kitchen making supper, a lot of this album sounded like people yelling in their garage. Lots of good songs here, but I think I like them more as they’ve been covered over the years or as nirvana did them on the Unplugged album, which is where I know the ones I know.
God, make it stop! Morriseys maudlin lyrics and droning voice over the pedestrian backing music was too much…I couldn’t make it through…Morrisey is musical murder.
I started out waving my hand at in front of my eyes whilst saying “This is not the Beck you’re looking for”. “Where’s the upbeat, funky Beck I know and love?’l shouted to myself. Then I bade myself to “Slow down, listen, don’t be hasty, lay your expectations aside, be open, stop eating chocolate chips from the bag”. And I slowed down, settled into a ‘Morning Phase’ state of mind and got along with it all. And now, a sure sign of positive personal growth and resilience, I like both Becks
Solid background music, but not sure I’d take it on a road trip or to the gym or to the bedroom or to the wood shop or most anywhere else with much intention. Great musicianship with nothing to really pull me in.
Throw in the hits and stuff some solid songwriting around them and you have yourself a Paul Simon album. I really do like ‘Duncan’ and enjoyed the demo version of ‘Paranoid Blues’. Nicely heard.
Right. I’ve heard that everyone is supposed to revere Elliott Smith and that he’s a musical genius, but this all just sounds like a bunch of emo shit to me. He has an interesting voice and some nicely elegiac arrangements, but I mean, Jesus, would it…wait…what’s that grandma…”if you can’t say something nice, just say they have nice teeth?”…Elliott Smith has nice teeth.