Not my favorite Sabbath album, leaning a little too jam band for my liking. I will say that the guitar riff at the beginning of Supernaut is simply epic, and the fact that they wrote a whole song full of snow innuendos for cocaine is sooo Sabbath. Also, Changes was such a refreshing reprieve from the heavy/doom/thrash metal that's so characteristic of Sabbath. Really enjoyed that song.

This album is an important one for me. My cousin, Charlie, introduced me to Elliot Smith as he would play lots of his stuff on guitar. RIP to two great guitar players. I think this is an effective album. The gentle and almost plaintive guitar chords alongside Smith's double-tracked vocals create this subtle atmosphere of melancholy, even in the record's more explicit or dynamic songs. The thing that makes this album for me, though, is the synergy between the acoustic guitar and Smith's voice; they are so complimentary in their quotidian simplicity, and they both manage to evoke such a particular breed of somber. Fave tracks: Between the Bars/Angeles/Rose Parade Least fave: Alameda/Ballad of Big Nothing

This felt discordant to me. I really appreciated tracks like Introduction, Fly, and Hazey Jane I because of the elements of pyschedelic-rock that they brought - the flute interludes, the delicate and ethereal orchestral bits, that West Coast sound. It was very Jefferson Airplane and I was very into it. But then the ebullient jazz threw me. Why the fuck is Nick Drake singing over cocktail jazz that I'd hear at my Aunt Sarah's? It felt awkward and kinda contrived to me, and made the album lack cohesion.

This was a voyage into a goth-punk underworld. And I loved it. The guitar is anxious and strident, the sonic atmosphere is hypnotic, and the raw, female vocals are epic. The lyrics are doomy and hard, contributing to the overall story of the album but without being so explicitly on-the-nose. Cryptic, poetic, violent, punk as fuck. Girl bands ROCK. Best tracks: Monitor, Into the Light, Spellbound Least favorite: Voodoo Dolly