cool funk jams, but not just spinning its wheels. there’s a certain amount of direction and intention to the solo/instrumental sections that you don’t find all the time in these types of open-ended jam style songs. the windup storytelling going into Phoenix is maybe a little long winded, but it pays off once it finally gets to the song proper. cool mix choices with the drums and bass straight up the center, and basically every instrument panned hard left or right. the guitar in Walk On By with the opposite panned ~200ms delay is fuckin rad. really enjoyed this record, a lot of cool r&b shit going on especially for 1969.

giving this one a fair shake for the first time in years, always been resistant. i like it more than i did when i was younger, but overall it’s still not really my wheelhouse. lots of great production ideas and musical concepts, the craftsmanship is really really impressive. i feel like there are long stretches of the vibe being very languid and drawn out, and sometimes they pay off but sometimes they don’t. it’s good but it’s exhausting. a lot of the album’s runtime kinda feels like homework to me, ultimately i wasn’t really feeling very many feels.

i adore this record from top to bottom, it’s been an all-time favorite of mine going back years.

interesting. not much of a prog rock guy, and as such i appreciate some of what’s going on here but this kind of thing always starts to feel to me like it’s spinning its wheels after a while. cool ideas in and out, but sometimes i’m not really sure why it’s repeating itself for so long at a time or why anything is happening. but the production concepts at times are really cool. not the record to invite me into giving prog another shot, but i enjoyed pieces of it for what it is.

saccharine pop goodness. he’s the king of pop for a reason. not every song on this record does it for me, but it all makes sense and i get it. the bangers bang hard.

i have a certain amount of respect and appreciation for the Rolling Stones because there is a pretty huge number of bands and artists i love who in all likelihood wouldn’t exist without them. having said that, i do not care for the Rolling Stones one bit. i find them obtuse and annoying, overly worshipful of blues/blues rock without really elevating the form at all. on some level, all of their songs, style, image, feel like they just *need* you to understand how cool they are. they have nothing for me. i’ll give this one extra star for not having any of the big hits that really crawl under my skin and drive me insane, but i really tried to give Exile a fair shake and only ended up making it halfway through.