it's literally steely dan, albeit one of their weaker albums. their sound here would later be chiseled into the gemstones that are aja and gaucho but thrill is still very good rock nonetheless. nothing experimental or offensive but just near-perfect execution of a classic style of rock. the pinnacle of easy listening rock.
the only downside to this album is that i can't listen to aja while i'm listening to it. i prefer their smoother, funkier tracks, so the higher octane hits of thrill aren't my preferred brand of danrock.
top 3 tracks: dirty work, kings, only a fool would say that
this is a GOOD ALBUM. but i cant listen to it. to my severely damaged, pockmarked brain, marty robbins sounds like dogshit facebook memes about fnv or any video game with a big pistol in it. i cant get it out of my head i have an illness. its so over for me.
theyre hanging me tonight is the standout for me and when i close my eyes i see the sierra madre. the tops. gomorrah. its so fucking over bros.
this is effectively a 2.5/5 but i literally cant give it a 50%
message in a bottle is obviously one of the greatest songs of all time and automatically earns this album a 3
walking on the moon is also a fucking banger track but thats really all i gleamed from the album. i struggled to really focus/draw an opinion on any of the other tracks, and zoned out a lot while i was listening to the album. its just very average 70s pop rock, with an occasional reggae flare thrown in. i think my biggest problem with the police is that id rather just listen to sublime, who really evolved that 'white reggae' style and introduced punk and ska to it as well.
theres also some legitimately bad tracks on this album. like actually awful. contact is the first track from this book that ive had to actually skip because i couldnt finish it. lowered to a 2 because of a handful of these absolute trashcan tracks
idk. the police are just a hits band imo, as a whole release this was pretty weak. its constituent parts were greater than it's whole.
i was going to give this a five for pure nostalgias sake but after properly listening to it a 4 hits best. it WOULD be a 3.5 but this dogshit ass site won't let me do half star reviews so it is what it is.
truly the greatest part about this album is the drums, with the lead guitar coming in as a second. it has some of the best drum fills and sections in rock/alt rock. an alt-rocker that actually knows what his toms and ride are instead of just abusing the snare, hi-hat and crash??? crazy. unfortunately they don't really give him much solo time to shine except for a few intros, and he manages to give such a rhythmic and layered performance that it gets watered down and washed out by the fact that other shit is going on around him. the lead guitarist obviously has some great solos throughout the entire album and he's using a les paul studio which just has such a nice full sound to it, but again he's often competing with other sounds of the band. the greatest parts of this album tend to be competing with eachother, while the mediocre vocal leads and over distorted dogshit power chords from alex turner wanking himself over his dogshit telecaster is often the loudest element and given the front row seat, while simultaneously being fucking shit and awful.
the thing that really holds arctic monkeys back, and has for a while now, is both their bassist and their vocalist. theyve always gone for that smooth but grungy punk alt-rock vibe but that really needs strong bass. some of the greatest garage rock and grunge bands: white stripes, black keys, nirvana etc all understood the importance of a prominent bass line, but AM seems to have mistaken a strong bass line for a loud one. they often have the bassist effectively playing the rhythm guitar's section, just playing the key note for whatever section theyre in, instead of playing a lick or a permutation on the lead or rhythm's section. and when he play a lick its like 3 notes long and in the same exact same rhythm as the rest of the band, or like in the case of still take you home, he's just mirroring the vocals or lead guitar, and often simplifying their part as well.
and the vocals. i think everyone knows that alex turner is a fucking wanker at this point, but at least he was a good lyricist on this album. he absolutely fucking sucks at the high register and he refuses to scream to ruin his pretty boy image. a proper grunge, punk, even a core or metal singer would have been able to do a lot more justice to the heavy sections of this album, which are clearly the highlights. in fact the one section where he does get a bit throaty at the end of dancing shoes is one of the highlights of the album, but they turned away from that sound because turner became the frontman and face of the band while being it's weakest part musically.
ultimately whatever people say i am is both the best thing they ever made and the thing that killed the band musically. it showed what AM could have been, a technically capable grungy alt rock band, and the dihcotomy between the sound of this album, and the watered down, radiorock sound they have now is a testament to how a dogshit vocalist who's popular because british women have awful taste in male attractiveness can ruin a band. many such cases.
still holds a soft spot in my heart but fuck alex turner and fuck the british.
also the breakdown at the end of a certain romance is one of the best outros to an album ever. especially because turner shuts his fucking mouth for most of it, and its one of the few sections were the bassist is capable of playing something that sounds interesting and unique instead of just loud and annoying. the whole band comes together in that final segment, and tells alex turner to shut the fuck up while they show their musical chops, and its such a fucking shame that they didn't do that for the rest of the band's career.
as much as i shit on turner he is a good smooth vocalist and i do still sing every lyric to this album when i listen to it, but he would be much better off with a different group instead of dragging down a bunch of legitimately skilled musicians to his level. also if he took his dick out of his own mouth and stopped trying to be a 60s greaser for whatever weirdo reason. nevermind fuck alex turner he's still a wanker i take it back.
i was neither too drunk or too depressed at the time of listening to really enjoy this album. it feels very emotional and im sure if i just went through a significant life changing trauma and had a bottle of red label it would hit different, but as it is i didnt feel like the intended audience and most of the tracks kind of breezed over me. still good sounding, just not my thing
I actually really like this band and almost all of the tracks on this song but i fucking HATE LIVE ALBUMS!!! I WANT TO LISTEN TO A TAILORMADE FINELY CRAFTED AUDITORY EXPERIENCE!!!
rushed review because i missed it and i can't be fucked putting in a lot of effort when the group hype has died down. it isn't bon jovi at their peak sex creep but it is still pretty good bon jovi. there are artists that have done it better, and bon jovi has done bon jovi better on other releases, but its still good buttrock.
i really fucking hate 70s and 80s british pop vocalists. i just hate british vocalists in general but this specific brand of british vocalist is really the cream of the shit-flavored crop. i'm sorry, there is some GREAT sax, organ and general instrumentation on this album but this oingo boingo ass mother fucker going yOu CaN't ShUt YoUr MoUtH completely ruins any enjoyment of the album i possibly could have had.
yet another case of 'this artist has done better releases before' but i looked it up and odelay is actually on the list so i'll live with it for now. mellow gold released after the book was made so he gets a pass for that one too.
my biggest problem with this album really is that i'd just rather listen to the other two. guero sounds like an attempt to recapture the lightning in a bottle that made odelay, which never goes well. i looked it up because i felt this was the case and his releases after odelay, while financially successful, had been received to more mild and at times poorer reception to odelay. apparently guero had been an attempt at a 'return to form' and technically i'd say it was success.
guero is like a calculated, formulaic recreation of odelay. E-Pro in particular is very very similar to the opening track on odelay, Devil's Haircut. aside from that there's some influences from the brief depressive string-y stint he went on during sea change, like missing, broken drum and blue jay way.
the biggest problem with this album is that the attempts to recreate odelay are mostly the weakest parts of the album, and make up it's bulk. part of the magic of odelay was the rawness of the album, and the revitalisation it brought to all the genres it mashed together. it really was the brainchild of a fan of several highly influential genres that had the musical chops to blend them together and make something not only new but also really fucking good, and something like that can't be recreated perfectly on purpose. his heart just didn't feel in it this time, in comparison to on odelay.
the songs where he tries something new, poppy and upbeat like girl and que onda guero are very good and clearly he still had some new tricks up his sleeve, many of which would come to fruition on later releases. apparently he had 35 new tracks on tapes he recorded during a tour which he lost, so he went back to some unfinished tracks that dated back to when he was writing the tracks for odelay, which makes a lot of sense.
ultimately this is a good, listenable album. i just don't think it's beck's best, and i can't listen to it without thinking of his best.
lately ive been enjoying rnb a lot more than soul but i listened to a fair amount back in the day and the queen of soul always made it into my playlists.
at first i was going to point out individual tracks and why i liked them but then i realized thats kind of pointless. every song is really good for both their own reasons and the same reasons. that being that the instrumentality is obviously great and aretha franklin sings in all of them.
its just a good release, one if the ones that would actually be made worse by my feeble minded attempts to review or critique it because its coming from someone that just is good music. in all her interviews she talks about the love and joy of making music instead of the dumb boring technicalities most artists talk about and thats a good indicator as any that she really understands what makes good music good. anyway go listen to this shit.
another british rock album, another album i can't listen to. i really can't be bothered even writing a full review for this one, i can already see the rats reviews. first song is good, rest is boring, bland and blends together (this is also my opinon). 4/5 from byron, no music is bad music.
i can already tell im going to be in the minority on this one. sonic youth, despite going out of their way to make (for their time) one of the most hostile, chaotic sounds in music, managed to avoid the pitfall of so many other noise rock and experimental post-punk bands. the male vocalist doesn't fucking scream. god i fucking hate screamo. anyway, lee is actually a pretty bad vocalist but he does spoken word so it doesn't matter too much. where it works really well is when they do the call and response sections similar to those in schizophrenia. kim is a brilliant vocalist and her soft, soothing tones are a good parallel with lee's more blunt spoken word sections, while kim also maintains a certain level of monotonality that results in the vocals never clashing too much with the chaotic instrumentals.
speaking of instrumentalism, conventional rock enjoyers will HATE this one. aside from maybe washing machine, i'd say this is one of their more chaotic albums. it was before they started to make their albums a little poppier with releases like the aforementioned washing machine, so it definitely had more of a rock/punk vibe than the admittedly more unique sound they would eventually form. it's an undeniably loud, angry sound from a loud, angry time.
ultimately this is an album composed by teenagers for teenagers. ask me when i was 15 or 16 and this was an easy five, but now i enjoy it more as a conceptual album. sonic youth was incredibly influential on noise and post/alt rock and punk to come and this was them at their punkiest and rockiest.
my tastes have moved too far away from this kind of sound to really love this album anymore. schizophrenia is still a banger and kim's vocals in beauty lies in the eye are definitely standouts for me, but the punky, noisy chaos and clashing guitar parts on the rest of the album just aren't for me anymore. i absolutely loved listening to this album all the way through again, but i couldn't bring myself to put it on repeat.
i was recommended this album many many moons ago on an ancient chinese basket weaving forum and at the time it changed my life. i thought man, i must be the only white boy that likes such a cool, experimental and refreshing take on the pop genre. what a fool i was.
anyway even if i dont really enjoy listening to this album anymore (probably a matter of fatigue) i still have to give it a good review. pretty undeniably a foundation in the blending of experimental electronic and pop into what has become mainstream electro and hyper pop hits like brat. thats right guys the /mu/ mpp pipeline resulted in brat summer and you can't convince me otherwise.
lots of bangers. my girls, daily routine, summertime clothes, taste. im a sucker for good synths and those tracks all have great synths on them. these days i think id rather listen to experimental or pop, and strawberry jam is probably my favorite release by am over mpp, but this is still good nonetheless. i was teetering on a 3 just because ive overlistened to this album so much but thats probably a little too subjective for such a good release.
another british vocalist. but this time i only find the vocals mildly irritating. the best part about the smiths was always the drums and the bass, they really pull the band together. anyway i didn't listen to this album too much anymore cos morrissey is one of the few artists were i struggle to seperate the art from the artist cos he's so fucking prolific in every project he was in. tried not to let that influence the rating tho cos the music is still pretty good listening.
as much as i hate the term GOAT, this is one of the few releases that truly earns it. not only is it a stellar album by itself, but it also contains some of the biggest singles of all time. i don't think i have to go in-depth on what makes this album so good, its MJ at it's peak and everyone knows what smooth criminal and thriller sound like.
i hate cypress hill's shrill vocal style, compound that with the fact their lyricism sucks ass and the only reason they get a 2 instead of a 1 is most of their instrumentals are good. this is basically danny brown from the 90s.
i don't have much to say on this album, i feel like it's just here because the carlos santos feature is in and that was a big single. otherwise, there's a lot better blues albums out there and this isn't even one of hooker's top three. idk. it's alright blues, just nothing mind-blowing with how amazing some of the releases out there are.
tried to listen to it while reading and fell asleep two tracks in. tried to listen to it again before bed and fell asleep one track in. tried to listen to it in traffic, fell asleep at the wheel and caused a sixteen car pileup.
boring bland and painfully uninspired, but its a 5 if you're talking about sleep aid
beastie boys is one of those bands were i love when one or two of their tracks come on but when i start to listen to them i realize that a bunch of shrill white boys being vaguely funny/absurb gets really fucking annoying after a while. good album, one of the artists where the best tracks are generally the ones with the most plays, but gets real grating after too long
when radiohead began entering its boring as fuck arc. pablo honey honey bangs, bends is okay, okc was a return to form and then kid a and onwards were just cashgrabs or them falling off or some shit because holy fuck how did such an experimental band become so boring.
they went from having these sweeping, epic orchestral songs, intense gritty rock and incredibly blown out, somber tracks to being the most fucking generic rock band ever. its so boring. they throw some reverb in there and have thom get killed in the balls then whine in the highest register ever and internet contrarians will tell you this was actually their best, most under appreciated release. listen to something else, they've done better, and so can most halfway competent alt rock artists.
to preface this i fucking love albarn's vocals on gorillaz. i think he has great energy and can even do melancholy well but holy fuck his mumbly ass needs to speak up on this album. its crazy how much contempt this review process has made me have for vocalists ruining otherwise good projects.
if there was an instrumental version of this album it would be an easy 4 for me, because goddamn if they don't have the fucking supergroup of supergroups here. some of the coolest, jazziest, smoothest instrumentals i've heard in a long time. i'd never heard of this project before and it seems like something right up my alley between the whiney leftist anti-war political leanings, the smooth, experimental jazziness and the gorillaz involvement. but honestly i'm somewhat glad i hadn't because i ultimately left feeling dissapointed. albarn isnt even the wrong vocalist for this project, he's just approaching it poorly. i get this release is meant to feel/embody the depression and hopelessness of it's themes but that doesn't mean you need to mumble like a 14 year old boy who just found out women get periods and doesn't understand why they have to go through so much
this just isn't for me. i usually love jazz and spoken word but waits is too growly and grumbly for me and i also just dont want to listen to this guy complain about his lower middle class life for an hour. jazz artists usually have drug addictions and violence and other depressing shit to talk about, or at least an infatuation with an interesting breadth of women they can go into detail about, but he just talked about how his bitch wife wouldn't let him go fishing and his shitty car keeps needing to get fixed. even the love songs have no substance, never talk about the subject of affection just how walts is such an epic lover and so in love and hes the best lover and hes gonna love you sooo much. to top it all off apparently he was a raging alcoholic and he barely talks about that, or any of the detrimental effects it has. honestly if this was an album about an alcoholic admitting how he ruined his life i think i'd have enjoyed it a lot more.
the instrumentals are great, the lyricism is actually really fucking good however he just isn't talking about anything interesting, but his voice is the real dealbreaker and it features far too prominently on the release for me to overlook it. maybe i just dont like vocals guys i think i should start listening to video game music instead.
fuck i love saxophones though.
i swear the mother fucker that wrote this book had the rfk brain worm
this is the kind of album that makes you cooler for having listened to it and ultimately what else is a white boy looking for in music
peak of inoffensive dadrock that has that one smelly insufferable guy in the bar going 'dude wait for this guitar riff they dont make music like this anymore'
hard to dislike it but it's also hard to really love it when the genre has been built on and expanded so much. im sure this was super heavy and intense and experimental for the time but now i'd rather listen to one of infinite sub-genres that appeal to the specific mood and mindset im in. there is some sick guitar riffs though.
what BORING fucking shit. another dogshit uninspired uninteresting bland unengaging uncreative un-fucking-anything nothing dogshit braindead waste of fucking time album. its a singles album and the singles arent even fucking standout. this is like if guy ritchie went 'lets make the stinger tracks from my movies boring and fucking interesting' kill yourself british people
i cannot tell you how much i fucking despise live albums. i really don't get what human being out there would rather listen to a live album. i can understand maybe right after it came out, giving it a listen once or twice if the performer tends to play unique renditions or is a real performer, but how can you prefer this to studio quality performings. this actually pisses me off that its on the list noone ever 'needs' to listen to a fucking live album, what they need to do is watch the fucking aritst live lazy cunts
anyway its bob dylan so its still great, i refuse to write My Comprehensive Bob Dylan Opinions on a fucking live album so im gonna save that
this is one of those albums that up themselves faggots will tell you 'was so important for the industry' or 'a huge inspiration for some of the greatest in experimental noise' but i guarantee you theyve never sat down and listened to this shit front to back in their own free time. now, while i admittedly didn't know people were doing noise this early which is kind of impressive, this is bad noise. this sucks. this has none of the rhythmic or hypnotic beat you want from noise, none of the interesting palette of sounds or variations. instead it's just overmodulated, over distorted discordant banging and electronic whining. it fucking sucks ass and also it's so fucking full of itself. the music is already pretentious as fuck, don't go around wanking your 2 incher claiming it's about 'extremist ideologies' and 'the dark recesses of human society and sexuality'. instead you should hang yourself with a noose.
i was almost tempted to give it a 2 just because it probably was influential but then i remembered cabaret voltaire existed and i changed my mind, these guys deserve their dogshit score and im contributing to it.
british. vocalist. the worst kind too these guys have to be the least creative artist on here so far. they're a pretty generic blend of that 90s era punk-influenced british rock with distorted guitar, distorted vocals, washed out drums and bass that's way too loud for how boring and repetitive it is.
the only good part of this album is that sometimes the vocalist sounds a little like bowie but then he fucks it up and sounds like another generic annoying british vocalist fuck this album
this is literally a 1 hit wonder band. they are on here because they had a big hit in england. i am going to kill this author and all other british people.
one of the most accessible bossa nova releases of all time, and the release that really brought it into the limelight for the western world. an incredibly full saxophone, subtle and beautiful piano lines, all perfectly blended with gilberto's soft, hushed whisper-like vocals. this is the perfect album to relax to. the real highlight of the album for me is the girl from ipanema and corcovado, both of which feature astrud, the female vocalist. as good as gilberto is these slow, melodic tunes really are elevated by a female vocalist.
this is an album thats hard to hate, and also hard to pick standout tracks from, aside from those listed. every song is just as good as the last. if i had to have one complaint, its that they didn't do anything offensive/experimental with the album, but bossa nova is already such a good genre, and this release is such a technically perfect example of the genre, that i really don't think they needed to.
if i ever see this robert dimery cunt in real life i will punch on with him night or day rain or shine. i do not care if hes infirm and 90 years old i will knock out the little joy left in his dead squalid brain for repeatedly subjecting me to this absolute fucking slop that some empty-skulled kiddy-fiddling self-hating guinness-drinking british slur confused with music.
i'm sure i don't have to talk in length about johnny cash, there's probably already at least 5 other reviews up fellating the man. the only reason this isn't a 5 is that even though it's a good album, i still prefer studio recordings. if i want to see a performer live i'll see them live, and living that incredibly unique experience vicariously just seems shallow to me, no matter how good the recordings or the performance may be.
i get the feeling this is the kind of album that has been sampled to death and back. this is the first time ive listened to rumba and i have no idea what the song making process is like but it gives me big jazz vibes. like a bunch of guys that know their instruments and their styles front to back and just go hard as fuck with a few drinks in hand and let the magic happen. particularly choferito-plena, whoever the mother fucker was that was going hard on that guitar was clearly off hits tits and loving every minute of it. they had some crazy good drums throughout obviously, but some subtle bass lines and miscellaneous percussion really made for an interesting auditory experience in an otherwise very unconventional sounding album. they completely defy the standard song structure of verse, chorus, verse bridge, chorus, instead opting for these long meandering riffs with chanting that lead into extended solos from their the drums and guitar that sometimes combined into at once discordant yet rhythmtic and coordinated duets. obviously the first track is standout but rhapsodia del maravilloso, choferito-plena and tribilin cantore were all personal favourites. amazing vocals, but mostly the inspired and creative instrumentation are what made this one a killer for me.
Seven light years below sea level we go. Welcome to Stankonia.
its fucking outkast. he opens the album with a comedy bit where that got some chick moaning in the studio like she's recording ASMR Dommy Goth Girlfriend Loves Tells You How To Please Her [8 HOURS] [BINAURAL BEATS TO MAKE YOU BUST].
is there really any hip hop artist with as much character and energy as outkast? others might have done trve hvp hvp better but outkast does outkast the best, and noone else does outkast. this is an artist i struggle to describe because none of the airy fairy adjectives i use to pad out the other reviews really apply here. each song has it's own profile, from an almost dmx-like aggressiveness on gasoline dreams with a fucking wwe ass guitar riff banging throughout, to the rnb smoothness of so fresh so clean that somehow keeps its own style with some of the best rapping rhythm and flow on the album.
straight into ms jackson. how do you even make such a good, heartfelt track about fuckin ya baby mama and leavin her a single mom with a paycheck. dude was fr an absent father and turned it into one of seminal tracks of the era.
snapp and trappin has the title of a memphis rap diss track but it has the beat of a captain murphy track. good ass beats to glorp and gleep to.
i was going to go through every track but theres so many and i got bored of typing. instead i'll just talk about BOB which is kind of funny because you might think 'oh shit was outkast aware of how fucked up iraq was??' no he just heard that shit on the news and threw it into the chorus of a song about how fucked up the hood and it's culture was at the time. truly inspired. also theres a song called We Luv Deez Hoes and another just called ? and i feel like that needed a mention.
also the interludes are legitimately funny, and this isn't even a comedy album. goddamn.
edit: relistening ? is like a clppng song. wth. outkast so clean so swag.
this is going to be a jack review, because i really could not pay attention while listening to this album. i played it on repeat like all day and just kept zoning out without really paying attention. maybe thats what the music is for? but it really just never struck a chord with me. it's a shame too because i really like amy winehouse's voice, from when i could pay attention to this release, she sounds like an amazing vocalist. but the sound profile was just so generic and inoffensive that i could never focus on the music itself. if she had a more striking backing track, maybe something jazzier or more soul-esque, i'd have liked it more, but the meh guitar and the near non-existent percussion really caused the general energy of the songs to fall flat. there was some good bass here and there, but it was all mixed in a way to be muted and kind of blend together, and it just didn't do it for me.
this era of punk isnt for me. i dont like the blown out over-distorted guitar or the tinny bassless drums. but the vocalist is fucking good and funny, and almost gives me some zappa vibes at times. entertaining album, but not one i'd listen to agian.
this shit had to have been sampled a million times. im not going to be much help on individual song reviews because i listened to this album on a single youtube video and it made it hard to seperate the songs, but everything blended together in a good way, where the music was so well blended, funky and transitional that every beat blended into the next. it was never repetitive or boring, which the genre often is, and remained Phunky Phunky Phresh throughout.
i am going to give ever mediocre britpop/britrock album on the rest of this book a 1 out of contempt and little else
wow, what an album to come back to.
i have a bit of a history with ELP, when i first became a wanker at roughly 15, i got really into mathrock and prog. i was playing guitar at the time and man i thought i was the shit, my taste in music was so experimental and more intelligent than yours, i listened to music for real thinkers.
i still listen to a lot of prog now but i certainly do not listen to ELP. they are easily one of the most pretentious prog bands ever, too up their own ass to spend time actually writing a good song and too focused on writing noodly 'epics' instead of making an actually interesting track that is trying something original, or creating something interesting. crimson is better at doing experimental, genesis and rush are better at songwriting. tarkus is just wankery and every time i go back to ELP i don't want to listen to them compared to their peers and contemporaries. i suppose at the end of the day, prog is a genre about trying new, interesting and challenging musical techniques. and in a sea of brilliant prog artists, ELP feels derivative of them all, without doing forging any unique identity.
not a 1 because i really like organs. also the vocalist is pretty good i guess.
highlights: 20:43 in Tarkus
weakest points: 00:00 to 20:42 in Tarkus
sorry i dont like country or women
this is literally the last of it's kind as an album and i'm not exaggerating. there was a lawsuit over rappers using samples in 1991, and now it's basically impossible to ever make another album like this again. the chaotic funk mixes of a million different samples will never be matched again, the trve art of the MC forever lost, and fear of a black planet was one of the last and the best to do it.
fear somehow manages to embrace the chaos that so many used to stereotype rap in the late 80s and 90s as 'just noise' while also having a unique, clear and succinct sound. the blend of funk, soul and rap is unmatched and i can't really do it justice by trying to explain it with my white boy ass terminology. and then all the instrumentals including blends of criticisms on their prior albums is the icing on the cake
only a 4 because i still think that they did it it better on it takes a nation of millions to hold us back
highlights: 911 is a joke, fight the power, pollywannacracka
of all the singer songwriter releases ive ever been forced to listen to, this is one of the more bearable ones. i still think that the genre is boring and derivative and highly uninspired but this makes for fine living room music when you have guests over i guess. i just wish these boring white men would get some musicality behind their admittedly good lyricism and songwriting
i really like the healthy dose of folk in american music club and ive listened to everclear and the golden age before both of which i enjoyed. those albums would probably get a weakish to middling 4 from me, but this is such a weird album to pick out of their discography. it almost feels like it was picked solely because it got banned or something? it didnt review terribly well compared to their other releases and seems pretty unknown. i dunno, it just seemed a bit more milquetoast than other records by the band, and you know i HATE not listening to a band's best release...
i've never been a huge fan of foo fighters. they're a bit too derivative mall-punk to me, with some admittedly good hits but the standouts have always been their music videos. great music videos, some say they have the biggest, most beautiful music videos. fortunately big me is the first music video to feature dave grohl in braids therefore elevating this album to a 3 for me.
i think the most dissapointing part was that grohl's drumming was so good in nirvana and it's so middling in this release. standouts for me are good grief, exhausted and x-static. if every track carried the same grungy depressed tone i'd probably like it more, but you can hear him starting to lean into the pop-rock mall-punk sound that foo fighters would eventually adopt which just isn't for me.
i really, really like this album. i've tried to listen to a few other elbow releases and they always just make me want to listen to this release instead. i could draw comparisons here and there, some of the cadences and especially the vocals are pretty clearly inspired by early radiohead but theres enough emotion, and the instrumental is so clearly different that i think it really is just inspiration without being derivative of radiohead's works. i cant really describe why i feel this way because i think that instrumentally they have very different sounds, but enjoying elbow came as an evolution of enjoying folk-punk artists like johnny hobo/pat the bunny and crywank when i was younger. i suppose its that very emotionally driven vocal sound, but i think the accompaniment is a lot more mature and the sweeping strings (i want to say cello but i dont know a lot about non-guitar string instruments) really, really add to it.
i know this isnt prog rock, but to me the album certainly has that progressive feeling of building up to something and telling a story through the music. im not sure if it's meant to be a concept album like that, but it's just a feeling i got from it that added to how enjoyable this release was to listen to as a whole.
highlights: the bones of you, mirrorball
the only release of bobby's that i really like. just good tunes. honestly a very simple album, difficult to write much about singer songwriter's, but this release is one of the few of these types of albums where the emotion behind it actually feels genuine in the both the instruments and the vocals, likely due to the fact that this is his epic breakup album.
good, basic early punk. does what it sets out to do and does it well. also pretty sure this wouldnt been one of the earliest and most formative releases alongside the sex pistols? could be wrong there. anyway good album, only not a 5 because i think the genre became a lot more than this, but it's still definetly one of the better albums in the genre.
the site ate my review, so i cbfed retyping the whole thing. basically i dont like glam rock but its hard to deny the instrumentation on this album, especially the drums. and i love me some bangin drums lad.
this album gave me a lot of nostalgia, and not because ive listened to the album, or even the band before. i used to listen to a LOT of punk but kind of fell out with the genre. this album really reminded me why i enjoyed it. fast, angry tracks that have killer solos and bridges. the only thing that lowers the rating on this a bit is that the vocals are pretty washed out and inconsequential to me, and i think that prominent vocals are a big part of the biggest punk acts.
woah dude i cant believe they made a whole genre of fallout music!!
jokes that should get you shot aside, i've always had a soft spot for sinatra. i've rarely gone out of my way to listen to him, but it's always a treat. i think that generally speaking he already has a somber tone, and at times on this release it can get taxing on this album to listen to an album about being depressed by a depressing sounding man.
man i miss boom bap hip hop and the fast-paced rapping style of the time. if nas refined the sound and made it more tempered and refined, snoop LION embraced it, embellished it and exaggerated all of it's extremes. tracks like who am i, ain't no fun, and g funk intro just have such crazy synths on them.
i just wish there was less fucking SKITS. maybe i'd have enjoyed them more if i wasnt grinding out reviews but holy fuck i dont care, do a comedy show or something, fuck you.
i've always been one of those faggots that says 'erm yeah i actually prefer wish you were here to dark side of the moon' but it is undeniably one of the best albums of all time. i think that overexposure is probably the only reason i dont prefer it.
i'm not writing a full review because it would just be me fellating them all the way through. vocals, instrumentation, mastering, songwriting, lyricism. yeah it's good innit
BORING ass BUTT ROCK. hit SKIP old man this shit SUCKS!!!
i actually didn't mind words, that was an alright track. and then for the rest of the album i dazed off into a self-destructive trance of suicidal ideation and terrorist plans aimed at british and british adjacent organizations.
overall shite, what the actual fuck is going on in that country for people to willingly listen to shit like this day after day after day after day after day after day after
