Sparse and somber. Lots of repetitive reverb guitar. Female vocals, male vocals, sometimes both together. If Evanescence took a Valium. Doggedly melancholy.
Pink Floyd in general, and parts of this album are "wall of sound" music. Everything hits the senses at once. Either you feel delighted or overwhelmed. The other half of this album are some of the most memorable guitar licks of all time. David Gilmour uses the same blues scale as everybody else, but his sounds are like a human being singing a beautiful melody.
If you play at all, you've tried "Wish You Were Here".
And that's my ONLY problem with the album. The two halves don't go together. It's a jarring switch between them. I've always wished they would have stuck to one concept on the album. So ride me out on a rail, but I can't give it a five.
David Byrne's singing is like a grown child having a breakdown. Lyrics are simplistic and without nuance. Ironically their big hit Psycho Killer does rhyme, but mostly they cannot be concerned with rhyming. There seems to be one rule in David's song writing...if it's good once, it's even better twice. The repetition can be distracting, especially when you realize that without it, there just isn't much material. Interestingly, if you slowed down their signature beat, it would sound a lot like reggae.
This album is hard to pin down. Just when you think it's firmly in the the Smiths and Cure camp, they come in with songs so Beatles influenced I hope they didn't feel that they were being original. The album ends with a 70's style epic, wah pedal heavy and a bassline ala Steve Miller Band, Fly like and Eagle. All of it is good, but so derivative that I have no idea what their sound is.
They brought interesting back to pop. Frenetic drum beats under modal shifts in harmony. Every chorus feels like a bridge, stark and edgy. This album holds up, cool as ever.
After listening to this album through, Google took me on a trip into the Beatles, Nick Drake, The Who, and Jefferson Airplane. It struck me how my reaction to the music changed when that happened. Granted, this album's folk-based, acoustic guitar-driven groovy vibe definitely had the sound of the times. But I see it more as a sound of summer album, that meant so much to maybe a group of hippies, listening to it on their travels in their VW van. I'm sure it meant so much to them in the context of what they were experiencing, and has a wonderful nostalgic quality for them now. But for me, their music doesn't have the same effect. The Beau Brummels simply weren't as inspired and talented and are easily lost in the shadow of their contemporaries who had such a profound influence on music. Bands like The Doors and The Mamas and the Papas will always be relevant, to me and generations to come. Although a good listen the first time, I don't think I will revisit this album.
This is the 80's sound, through and through. Soft Cell has a certain rhythm they use over and over again. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. I knew what I was getting into when I read the title, but was still surprised at the level of depravity described in some of the lyrics.
Spent some time listening to this one. It is definitely an album of substance. You have to love a song with pipe organ! Each song sounds so different from the next. Antichrist Television Blues' lyrics are insightful. Win Butler's voice sounds so much like Bruce Springsteen's on ATB that I spent a lot of time looking for a guest performer credit on the song. There is a haunting feeling listening to The Well and the Lighthouse. It's a really good album, but after a lot of thought, it's not a great album in my opinion.
Joni Mitchell is one of the greatest artists of all time...and it is also true that this is a truly terrible album. It seems like Joni drank the coolaid of her own success on this album and became a laughable parody of herself. This album is one of those "what were you thinking!?!” albums that came out in the 70's. During that time, many talented artists made terrible decisions in an effort to be clever and take things in a new direction, and instead ended up looking ridiculous. Some how, some way Joni produced an album with no alternate tuning guitar or piano parts and lackluster lyrics. That's ludacris. All I can figure is she fell under the spell of that bizarrely awful bass player. I can't believe I'm saying this about Joni, but this album is a 1. It's just unlistenable.
This was a good album... Just not the energy I had been expecting. I recognize that there are some hits on this album, but I was ready for Space Oddity levels of intensity and this is just a kinder, gentler Bowie. I can appreciate it, but I'm glad that so much more substance was coming down the pike for David.
I think you should always listen to a Bruce Springsteen album twice before making a decision about it. It turns out that I love this album a lot more upon the second listen. I have always been put off by his use of major mode as the setting for such insightful, sometimes dark, lyrics about human grit. But I'm learning that maybe minor mode is the easy way out. Maybe saying those things along with that quintessential E Street Band joyful saxophone lick is actually a way to inject some optimism into the darkness. All I can say is, after listening to the boss I always feel a lot cooler.
I think this band's sound is somewhere between Black Crows and Beatles. But the bad versions. That I couldn't tell if I liked them is telling and due to a lack of focus on their part. I have to say that some songs had that cool vibe. But the others lacked confidence.
I wish there was a 6...this would be it.
I listened to this religiously as a teenager...a teen two decades after the original teens who listened to it. I didn't know at the time that I had stumbled onto one of the greats. I naively thought all music was this good...
Led Zeppelin II is timeless, ageless. In part because they drew from older music themselves. There are reworkings of Southern blues throughout. And that material paired with such unique, rock solid musicians, made it destined for greatness.
As an adult, my love of the blues and drums brings new meaning to it when I listen after all of these years. Maybe my teenage self didn't appreciate Howling Wolf and Robert Johnson... and didn't pay close attention to John Bonham. But I surely do now. It turns out, many of my musical loves grew out of my relationship with this album.
I enjoyed the autobiographical nature of this album. And not enough can be said about Biggie's voice. That throaty baritone filled with moxie. Pride in one song, rage in the next. Songs about coming out of the life of a drug dealer into the life of a musician are a common theme. It's a shame that changing his focus still couldn't keep him safe from violence. The Biggie vibe is that of a monster rhyme delivered with timing absolutely locked in the pocket. Stick those lyrics on top of beats by Puff Daddy and that's a winner all day long and twice on Sundays. All of that being said however, I could never give an album this misogynistic a five.
You know when it's a DJ that there won't be any original music. That being said, I really enjoyed his mixes and even recognized some of the samples. Anyone that samples Bjork is ok in my book. I'll say this, I enjoyed the album enough to actually look up the references. It was a bit of a nostalgic ride through the nineties. Tribe Called Quest, Nirvana and Twin Peaks...there ya go...I'm in. I will definitely listen to this album again.
I keep double checking that this album was released in 2019. It was....but it never sways from the 1960s/1970s British pop/rock sound. That crisp guitar distortion of a Tele or Gretsch through an overdriven Vox or Marshall amp is the unmistakable sound of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Outsiders, etc. etc. etc. And the acoustic guitar on top of a string arrangement with layered female backup vocalists in the background IS the sound of the 70's. This guy is nothing new. Even within what was a worldwide revolution in sound at the time, he finds a way to be boring. I have to admit, everytime I go down the road of listening to a British "R&B" or "Soul” artist, I finish wishing they had left those genres to the Americans, whose rugged, raw, and gritty blues and soul artists/music tower over the well meaning but polite and sterile British versions.
