Skipped track 1, Imagine. Overheard. I find it tedious.
Some really good blues-y tracks through, but I find his voice is an odd sound, like too distant or echoey.
Shout out to tracks:
- 2 (Crippled Inside)
- 3 (Jealous Guy)
- 4 (It's So Hard)
Track 5 (I Don't Want To Be A Soldier Mama) has a great blues / honky piano in the background throughout.
And now that I'm going through each track again quickly, and I'm noticing the subtleties more. It's actually pretty good. Tracks 2-9.
Also skipped 10 (Oh Yoko), because, Yoko.... but strong album, interesting sounds. Not a favourite album, but worth a revisit at some point.
Trumpet jazzy funk.
Track 1 (Zombie), oosh, starts off really strong intro. Loving the jazzy funk, with African tribal chorus. Funkalicious and energetic. Where has this been all my life?!
Track 2 not as strong. Slower, more subtle... nice relaxed vibe. Same with track 3. Probably good background stuff for cool coffee house vibes.
Track 4 is a live track.
Classic tracks Black Magic Woman and Oye Como Va...
Good guitar album with a 60s 'jam' style
I don't get it. Doesn't feel cohesive, like a bunch of ditties put together within a song... a jam session where a melody is picked up for a moment and then dropped, without ultimate direction. Granted, some interesting sounds, and an interesting fusion of rock and jazz in a psychedelic sense.
Fave track is maybe 3, Son of Mr Green Genes. Least fave is 5, The Gumbo Variations.
Some classic tracks (Turn To Stone, Mr Blue Sky, etc)... really interesting sounds, so rich and layered.
I enjoy old soul and funk... I should love this, and I do - in places. There's something about Marvin Gaye that just doesn't gel for me. Maybe it's the hype around him that taints the music for me. I just don't think he's *that* good.
That said, I like how the album is stitched together. It does feel like a cohesive experience.
First two tracks (Running Up That Hill, and Hounds Of Love) are the best. The rest of the album is intriguing enough, but not enough to make me a Bush fan [snigger]
I don't know a single Bragg song. When this album came up, I didn't see that it's him AND Wilco - not that that makes a difference, to be honest. But I don't get it. Only one track really stands out: Hoodoo Voodoo.
The more I listen to it (though at this point, I'm just sampling bits from each song), I think I get what I don't like... he's got that Bob Dylan apathetic drawl in his voice. I'm not engaged.
Really strong album, despite only one well-known track (6, Groovin').
There are some firmly 60s vibes in places, especially with the harmonies; in others, it feels like a timeless 'crooney', loungey sound with intricate layers, incl. orchestra and horns etc. It's quite sophisticated, or at least interesting, in places.
Kid A was from 2000? that makes me feel old... I think at the time, I was still reeling from OK Computer, and this one didn't necessarily land (all downhill after OK?)
Kid A marks, in my eyes, Radiohead's departure from rock music as they entered a more experimental phase. I find some of it a little too odd, not something easily listened to, and in some places quite jarring. That said, there are still traces of the old, with thumping basslines or rhythms.
I had thought it would be an easy 5-star rating based on how the album opened, but now that I near the end, I'm not so sure - so maybe an easy 4...
Highlights:
1 Everything is in the right place
3 The National Anthem
4 How to disappear completely - languishing tones well-suited to Yorke's voice
6 Optimistic
What a voice. So smooth. You can't go wrong with Ella.
Gershwin, on the other hand, is a bit like Marmite. It feels a bit dated, markedly so, and definitely has that mid-20th century feel, but at the same time, it also has that timeless charm.
I don't know Gershwin's work too well at all, and thus don't really connect to the songs. But if I was sitting in a coffee shop, and this was playing in the background, some of these tracks would feel quite lush and indulgent.
This is 6 CDs worth, so it might get a bit 'samey' after a while.
I could be biased as this was one of the albums of my young adulthood. I've not listened to this in a while, and it's a nice to have a revisit. Oftentimes, music of old doesn't quite live up to the nostalgia we have for it.
That does apply to some extent here - after all, a lot of music has come and gone in 30 years.
In places, it feels a little tired and 'small-towny'. And then you get a track like 5, Good Grief... and good grief, what a thumping tune.
7, Weenie Beenie, whilst it wasn't on the Road Rash (PS1) soundtrack, it takes me straight back there.
9, For All The Cows... gosh, not heard this in forever. I used to *love* this, with its jazzy chords.
Slow rock track X-Static (10), with gentle vocals floating above the heavy guitar and drums, has a very different feel to the next track, Wattershed - energetic, shouty, punky...
I never really thought of Foo Fighters as having this range. Or maybe they were just finding their feet / their sound...?
Cool 80s vibes, with echoey synths and floaty riffs. There's a good amount of reverb on the vocals, it seems, and I don't know if it's that, but I find the woman incomprehensible. I wondered at several points if she was singing in French. I still don't know.
Highlight was the title track, 5, Heaven Or Las Vegas. Also, 8, Wolf In The Breast.
Vocals on Cherry-Coloured Funk remind me of Shakespeare's Sister.
This album is from 1990. I don't know how I didn't come across it before. I may have seen Cocteau Twins on "Now That's" compilations, but I don't think they would have clicked.
I'm not blown away by this. It's good, interesting, but would I listen to it regularly or repeatedly, probably not. Three stars seems harsh, four too generous...
I hear The Doors. I hear The Monkees. I hear a bunch of different stuff from the 60s, with that distinctive sound. It feels like I'm on a history trip, or if I'm listening to the soundtrack to a Vietnam War movie.
But it ain't the stuff of classics. Occasionally, there's a glimpse of sophistication, but ultimately it feels like fool's gold. Mostly, it's tedious and lumbersome.
