I’ve had to endure 25+ years of insufferable Gallagher ego and self-importance to buy into the general what would otherwise feel like an earnest but fairly one note album. Other than Live Forever, the album blended into a forgettable blur of mid-tempo drumming and left me reaching for more memorable Brit-rock albums from Blur and Radiohead.
Is it a great album? Yes. Does it break into my top 3 Sufjan albums? No. The grandiose theater kid moments can sometimes detract from the parts I love about his music, but sometimes they come together in a track like Chicago and it’s perfect. I prefer the melancholy of Javelin or Carrie & Lowell more, but this album still is still a welcome listen every time I hear it.
It’s not really my place to criticize something that’s proven to be so foundational to music today. I understand all the reasons this is a classic. It’s a delicate, spacious, and beautifully recorded album that doesn't personally have a place in my day to day listening. To be perfectly honest and not to detract from it in any way, I just prefer Bitches Brew more. It’s clear why this has stood the test of time and on the right listen could be life altering. It should probably be a 5/5, but I’m giving it a 4.5/5 just based on my personal tastes.
It’s not really my place to criticize something that’s proven to be so foundational to music today. I understand all the reasons this is a classic. It’s a delicate, spacious, and beautifully recorded album that doesn't personally have a place in my day to day listening. To be perfectly honest and not to detract from it in any way, I just prefer Bitches Brew more. It’s clear why this has stood the test of time and on the right listen could be life altering. It should probably be a 5/5, but I’m giving it a 4.5/5 just based on my personal tastes.
A fun listen and a total nostalgia blast, but nothing more. Lacking the context of punk breaking through to the mainstream it becomes a little hard to reconcile their present with their debut considering their best and worst work is ahead of them, but none of them have the energy that this project has.
Fond memories of being 12 and stealing my brothers copy of this aside, I’m tempted to say this kick started my love of electronic music that’s led to 20+ years of DJing and making music. That’s probably a little true (though I’d blame The Chemical Brothers), but listening now it just didn’t hit the same. Maybe it’s the fact that the election was last night and I was emotionally exhausted. I didn’t so much have fun listening to The Prodigy’s “rave music you can understand as rock music” experience as much as it just felt good having Keith Flint just as mad as you at whatever. Long story short, the singles still hit hard. The rest is mixed and not every rock and rave mixture holds up well. 3/5
I get the appeal, but this was an incredible slog to get through. The most absolutely dull instrumentation and a general vibe of a cult. I find too much tragedy in the Carpenters story to find any real peace or hopefulness in the lyrics. 1.5/5 from me. Rating as a 2 because of respect for her voice and harmonies.
It’s a classic through and through with a story that elevates it. Immensely enjoyable and a top 20 album in my life.
A solid pop rock album whose singles will get stuck in your head for days, but carry the album as a whole. Luckily, the massive singles comprise about half the album. You Oughta Know is just as biting as I remember. Did the drums always carry this much of a trip hop vibe or am I just hearing it now? Either way, this album is drug down my some very 90s production, the lack of a theme pulling these tracks together, and the reality that her pop success is double edged. The songs lack the grit or depth of some of her contemporaries and had me constantly thinking of artist who did these think of songs but with more of that edge that makes them memorable
A top ten album for me. I could write a thousand words on what makes this so good or why the themes hit so hard and feel so relevant a decade on. It’s just someone else has written it better. That first listen though, coming off a 16 hour shift and finding out it had released. Hearing that Flying Lotus production on the opening track sounded like nothing else out there. The emotional peaks of u. The Radiohead samples on How Much a Dollar Cost. The shift i has on the album. How raw and hard The Blacker The Berry hits. The conversation it created with GKMC. Not leaving my car until the first listen was done. That was a special experience that fueled a decade of listening habits. What Kendrick excels at is imperfect answers to complicated questions that are honest rather than truth because his experience is always at the center of them. A dense high mark for emotional honesty and storytelling in a genre that can often get misaligned by its content.
An uneven and un-memorable follow up to a classic. Not experimental enough to challenge and one of the most bloated albums I’ve heard so far with about half the tracks feeling like musical wallpaper. The were some moments that I enjoyed, particularly around the middle of the album, but this is no one’s favorite Fleetwood Mac album.
It is a perfectly fine album that you hoped was better. The XX’s debut was a 3am slice of vibes. Their coming back together after on this album showed a ton of growth, but an inability to capture what made that first and to a lesser extent second record special. I still enjoyed this album, but the solo output from all three members of the band are personally more memorable than what is here which is honestly, a good thing.
A perfectly fine 3.5/5 that can be a 4/5 at 1am at a dive bar. Like some of the artists on here, it is hard to go above a certain rating when they have other projects I just enjoy more (specifically the earlier Rubber Factory). I liked this album enough to see them on their tour for this album and it was clear they were heading for some more mainstream adoption rolling off of this. Actually sitting down to listen to this for the first time in about a decade, I found myself missing some of the grit of their earlier records and being bored by the radio singles, but still enjoyed the vibe as a whole.
Like most of what I enjoy about Brian Eno, it’s the risks and experimentation that I respect and love. As a fan of electronic music, there is so much here that is innovative and predictive of the future.
It’s a vibe and certainly good at what it is, but I’d be lying if I said this sustained my interest as an album. Massive respect for the time period and what they managed to make here, but this just doesn’t feel like an album to me.
Incredibly enjoyable throwback for my Saturday. Nothing life changing. The aspects I enjoyed about this would go on to get refined with trip hop, but this serves as a fun intermediate album between two eras. A solid 3.5/5 for me, but its lightness makes it hard for me to go above that. I’ve got a lot of respect for Stereo MCs and their reinvestment of a surprise massive hit back into the electronic scenes.
Solid, but nothing spectacular. Just missing the energy that I usually like from this genre.
An easy 5 for me. It's got pretty much everything I want out of an album. Innovation. Emotional depth. Brian Eno. The ambient excursions alone solidify it's impact. Bowie has better hooks and more memorable songs, but this one consistently comes up as the favorite album of other musicians for a reason.
Coming into this only familiar with A Case Of You, I was pretty blown away by this one. Beautiful song writing. Wonderful vocals. You can feel the influence of this on a generation of songwriters. It can blend into itself a bit which is what holds itself off from a 5/5 personally, but I really loved this one.