Jan 02 2025
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Disintegration
The Cure
Remember when music was made to enhance big public spaces that people wanted to exist in and not drown out the sound of all the other people crowded in the modernist polygon with shit acoustics? I can't help but think of the mall near me. It used to have multiple koi ponds. Now the only thing there still doing business is the pretzel stand because the profit margin on a soft pretzel is still next to infinite. Where am I supposed to meet my stacked goth if our natural habitats have all been wiped out? The Internet? Where everyone also exists in the six remaining places screaming over each other for attention as the meaning behind life becomes more and more austere.
This is such a beautiful album and I want to exist in the world that it was made for.
5
Jan 03 2025
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Back In Black
AC/DC
Okay, yes, AC/DC is a 2 as a reflection of what it actually represents in society. If it existed in a vacuume it'd be a 4, maybe 4.5 just because AC/DC easily has the Top 5 Double Entendre Songs this side of The Masochism Tango and it's actually impressive when you think about it. I'd split the difference but I was literally verklempt, wistfully hoping, while listening to "You Shook Me All Night Long".
4
Jan 06 2025
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Aftermath
The Rolling Stones
FFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff................................ I've heard Mother's Little Helper so many times before, didn't even register the name of the song let alone register the content of the lyrics before just now. The rest of it just drags on after that. This is the band? This is iconic? This is in the cannon of our Collective Cultural Achievement? [Clay Davis says 'Sheeeeiiit' (10 hour edit)]
1
Jan 07 2025
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Physical Graffiti
Led Zeppelin
Is Led Zeppelin more high on their own bullshit than anything else? Yes.
Would understanding the meaning behind most of the songs annoy me? Yes.
Do I want to hear Kashmir with a full orchestra so loud that it melts my face off? Yes.
(Rounding up to 4 from ~3.5)
4
Jan 08 2025
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Machine Head
Deep Purple
Break Glass if you Need to Rock
5
Jan 09 2025
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Bluesbreakers
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
This is the ideal of a three-star. It's music that would be on if I was on at an independent hardware/parts store on a Saturday morning in early June. I don't care to intellectually investigate it. I don't want to think about Eric Clapton.
3
Jan 10 2025
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Olympia 64
Jacques Brel
4
Jan 13 2025
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Pretzel Logic
Steely Dan
I know that it's a Duke Ellington arrangement. They way they did it was wrong but I can't explain why. It's good music... but the stuff that it's about is so alien to me. It's all bougie bohemian problems.
3
Jan 14 2025
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Illmatic
Nas
The other day I drove past a cigar bar on a country road that had a sign in the Godfather font.
3
Jan 15 2025
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The Yes Album
Yes
I can't help but look back fondly at an era of pulp culture despite living in the downstream consequences of it. No other band has two Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040 episode name tributes, but there's a reason why this is not one of them.
3
Jan 16 2025
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Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba
I have the zeal of a convert.
5
Jan 17 2025
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Melodrama
Lorde
Music made on a computer for playing too loud at bars where you don't talk to anyone you don't already know. A simulacrum of a life lived. hi-hat_4.wav the album.
2
Jan 20 2025
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Hot Rats
Frank Zappa
My feelings about my father are complicated. It's hard for me to look past his immense failures as a father. There are so many memories though of the times that he clued me in to who he was as a person. Really early on, before my friends started playing Amish Paradise, I remember my dad having Weird-Al In 3-D on cassette. I don't remember him ever playing it but I remember inheriting it after. I also remembered that he used to joke that he wanted to name me Dweezil or something like it because of Frank Zappa. I've always kept Zappa at a distance because of my father. It was a step too far into his realm.
When I listened to this, I went into the basement and smoked half a joint and tried to build a coat rack out of spare lumber and screws only to give up after 15 minutes because it was too hard to do without a bench vice. In that moment, I had a perfect transcendental experience. I saw the beauty in the futility of our lives. I saw the depths of Zappa beyond the wonton crassness. I saw the depths of my father beyond all the pain he caused me into the pain that was caused to him. I saw who I was as a person and came to terms with it.
(Also, it just fucking whipped. I'm going to go listen to it again.)
5
Jan 21 2025
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Tusk
Fleetwood Mac
I think I'm kinda over Fleetwood. Actually yeah. I would gladly never have a conversation about Fleetwood Mac ever again.
3