It's fine as late-career albums go. 'Lazarus' is quite good prog rock and the real highlight for me is 'Girl loves me', with its strange vocal tricks and lyrics. The rest I find clumsy, like how several tracks sound like 80s TV music, especially the closing track. This really clashes with the sombre tone. I'd take Bowie's 'Station to station' or 'Scary monsters' over this record any day
"En garde!"
36 chambers is the gold standard of posse rap for many reasons! I think my biggest takeaways this listen was just how much fun they were having while making this. These 8-9 geeky dudes just rocked up to the NYC studio and had a great time. I love the hardcore delivery yet refreshing lack of gangsta lyrics (not that there's anything wrong with that, but the variety is nice) and the laugh out loud bars on every song.
Some very early new wave. Rather middle-of-the-road as the genre goes, basic lyrics and verse-chorus-verse structures. The chorus of 'Just what I needed' does pop off to be fair but the rest I forgot soon after listening. Pleasant to listen to; won't blow anyone's socks off.
Having only heard The Specials' debut, I was actually more impressed with this one. It's very much leaving behind the 'pure' ska punk sound, and it loses some of its bite and punk attititude as a result. Not that the band's defining checkered ska aesthetic is gone entirely, and their politics of radical working class solidarity between whites and blacks is still there and as on-point to this day as it was under Thatcher.
I think they integrate ska instrumentation into the other genres explored extremely well. There's all sorts of stuff infused with ska - lounge, Mexican music, northern soul, sounding great and comedic at the same time. I yearn for some more VICIOUS ska but I appreciate this softer style and can get the former from Rancid and The arrogant sons of bitches.
Meet "Spooky Bjork". This is a very solid art pop album, with a uniquely psychedelic aesthetic and wonderful production on both the instrumentals and vocals. It's a capital-H Headphones experience! I lean far towards electronic music as opposed to pop which does bias me towards the IDM style songs like the incredible 'Dry and dusty' towards the start of the album. I LOVE how some tracks use their lack of drumbeat to create this immensely spacey feeling, like you're floating on your back down a river at night. So the later songs with more traditional pop song structures let me down even if the production is still good.
I agree with most of the good things said about this album, just not all that passionately. The tonal disconnect between tracks 1 and 2 always irritates me. The lead guitar, bass and production quality are all awesome.
Timbaland proving himself the greatest R&B producer of all time. Listening to 'Hit em wit da hee', or 'More than a woman' from Aaliyah's self-titled, is enough to make 2010s production sound boring as fuuck. Missy's fine.
It never stood out to me in Anco's discography, but on relistening to MPP now I really do love it and think it's their strongest, most polished album, even if sanding off the harsher electronics and screams sacrifices a lil bit of the band's uniqueness. It's still a wacky record with loud-ass neo-psych stuff integrated into some wonderful pop song structures. Songs like Bluish and My girls are just really, really well composed and lovely to listen to. More experimental cuts like Lion in a coma complement rather than clash with them. Great track sequencing too!
Fun and funky. Not as funky as 'Dirty mind' nor as euphoric as 'Purple rain' but a Prince is a Prince.
Back when they still had a bit of punk fire. It's unquestionably their best album but I don't love it. The songs that truly rip (Dancing shoes, You probably couldn't see...) make the dully ballady crap sting. Just give me riffs! Very cool that it drew a huge young audience into Britain's punk and post-punk scenes in the mid 2000s, scenes which retain their relevance today.
Baby's first progressive rock album. Incredibly impressed with their own intelligence. Thom-Yorke-ripoff vocals. The prog-latin crossover missed the bus since The Mars Volta did it orders of magnitude better, but the spaghetti western stuff on Knights of Cydonia is kinda cool (until the unlistenable processed vocals kick in). The pop rock songs like Starlight remind me of more enjoyable hours I've spent listening to Coldplay but end up being the best parts of the album.
I also like how the album cover looks like a drug deal scene from Breaking bad!
The piece de resistance is the lyrics though. On a song ostensibly about the grandiose theme of the galaxy being sucked into a black hole, we're treated to this:
"I thought I was a fool for no one
But, ooh, baby, I'm a fool for you
You're the queen of the superficial
How long before you tell the truth?"
WELL PLAYED, SIR! I F*****G LOVE SCIENCE!
A cool and good post-punk album, very forward-thinking for the genre for a 1979 release. It's not among my very favourites though. To me it seems to be trying to go down both 'the light side and dark side' of post-punk simultaneously, and the stark, gothic sounds clash with the brighter dance-punk stuff. The very popular 'Damaged goods' suffers from this, with the sour chords and vocal lines killing the danceability for me. 'Natural's not in it' is my favourite track here.
Luv Steely Dan. Simple as. 'Night by night' and 'Pretzel logic' are highlights even if it doesn't reach the heights of Can't buy a thrill and Aja
