Excellent front half, more like "Very good" back half. Though all the experimental songs there do eventually get goin'. Can hear echoes of later Bowie in the catchiness of the musings.
This album rocks HARD. Love the screaming and the progressive nature of Child In Time. Perfect for headbangin' to. Can hear some glimpses of "Smoke on the Water" through the latter half of the album.
Wife hated it.
Not good. Meandering and devoid of melody. "Jean Genie" is ok.
A lot of experimental sounds that are purposefully off-putting. Good tunes lurking underneath it all though, dragged down by "joe the lion" and similar silliness
Ok. Some muddled "freakazoid" and "anti-religion" lyrical messages, accompanied by progressive but tuneless prog-rock meandering. The flute isn't as bad as it could be. Steven Wilson's remaster is really good.
"Talkin World War III Blues" is awful. Same with "I Shall Be Free", this song sucks.
A couple of good songs here ("Don't think twice, it's alright" and "Blowin in the wind"), but the rest is just a guy with a terrible singing voice bangin out some chords on an acoustic guitar and rambling.
Happy and jangly, like a Muppets album from the late 70s. Good tunes here, need to give it some repeated plays to let it sink in. Love the optimism and her crystal-clear voice, and Bela Fleck and co sound great as always.
Excruciating to listen to in places, this is a record I had to grit my teeth to get through. I kind of agree with the other reviewers who say it's completely devoid of melody - certainly nothing here will be stuck in my head.
Still though, there's something a bit endearing about it... the sheer power and downwards-facing depressed outsiderness of a musician trying to figure it all out, it's at least honest.
Background music cratedigger sample splicing hiphop ish with some random noises thrown in. Not particularly interesting or memorable in any way
So awful I had to pause it to come up for air several times. For someone who poses on the cover as if he dislikes fame, he's certainly trying to court it with these "songs".
Heinous lyricism abounds
"These are strange days we are living in today
Am I straight or am I gay?
I hope I'm old before I die
I hope I live to see the pope get high"
barf
"Clean?" made me wonder if this is all tongue in cheek, awful on purpose. There's an imitation Elton John song. The constant overly-dramatic but inauthentic references to death. The obviously self-centered worldview...
not for me, I hope I never have to hear this one again
EEEEEEEEE-EH DEEE UHT WIIIIND
What is with this guy's pronunciation? Is it a cover for his horrendous singing voice?
Every time I think "hmm I might be making some headway with this guy" he then BLASTS off a screechy awful harmonica solo...
There's a song that the guitar isn't even tuned right in. Is he trying to offend us?
Awful forced rhymes...
nah
At least this one was actually sonically interesting. Probably more of a 2.5 but the latter half songs were disconnected between the lyrics and the musical presentation, like they were doing different albums in different rooms and then just got slapped on top of each other.
Straight up jammin'. Comes really close to 'jazz' while staying pretty solidly in 'rock' groove.
Varied instrumentation and interesting sounds and production techniques.
The harshness of the violin in The Gumbo Variations (and the ridiculousness of the vocals in "Willie the Pimp") holds this back from a 4.
Refreshingly honest. Very punk, but with surprising tenderness at certain points. Brash and noisy, without being grating sonically. The lead singer is electric, as are the other two instrumentalists, and each pull the band in the direction they want, and the others move to catch up, in a super tight fashion.
Front-loaded with a bunch of great songs thrown together on an album that's simply way too long and unfocused to be great itself.
High points: "Porcelain", "Why does my heart feel so bad", "Natural Blues"
Low points: "Body rock", "South side", entire back half, terrible poetry
Proof that just because things make musical-sounding noise and play in the same key, it doesn't necessarily add up to "music"
Some lyrics are way too dark and serious for the stupidly poppy and upbeat instrumentation, like a guy who wasn't part of the band is reading from a lyric sheet for someone else's music and making up the tuneless "melody" as he goes
The hyperbolic praise and mystique around this album is downright silly. Billy Joe set out to write "his own bohemian rhapsody" and then we ended up with two songs in a row about "omg gurls!!!" ?
Musically the album is just wall to wall full of power chords, bass following the exact same pattern as the guitar, and lots of crash cymbals. Sonically it's only interesting in a couple of places (hello, middle of "Homecoming"). Features a couple of good, catchy songs ("Holiday", "Wake me up when september ends").
Overall though it just feels really inauthentic and "edgy" for the sake of it. Let's throw in 1 f bomb into our radio hits so that we still can make tons of money from them! While also criticizing the radio / media / whatever lowhanging fruit we can get our hands on! Blegh
Racist, misogynistic violence pornography set to sick beats
Dr Dre is a genius with his beat production. Some great flow on display here too.
Unexpected nuggets of wisdom and humour abound - Their seeming hypocrisy ("Don't listen to me" on Parental Guidance, "Don't do drugs" on Dope Man, "Don't do women or materialism" on I Ain't Tha 1) seems tongue-in-cheek and self-aware.
Too dang much violence and profanity and bravado and machismo for that 5 though.
Boring, repetitive. Preachy
Beats aren't that good so it falls flat when they rap about "rhythm making the body move"
"Dawn of the dreads" is awful. Album ran out of steam and overran its creative output long before it ran out of play time. Could not wait for it to be over.
Funky jams. Kind of makes me sad that "music" isn't actual instruments being played anymore.
Apart from groovin' and playin', not a lot else going on here. Fine as background music.
What a stupid closing track.
Help Me Rhonda has the worst "faux fadeout fakeout" ever
The rest of it is fine
Kind of gothic-y, sparse. Though I like the sound, there's not a lot going on here, no real reason to return to it.
The supporting shout outs from Hill every few words actually make their words have *less* impact. The skits are tedious.
Still, they have talent and can write some earworms.
Clearly she's a talented singer. I struggle with the "women's sexuality female empowerment" vibe while also clearly posing for the male gaze and singing songs written and produced by men... also quite embarrassing album artwork to have on your monitor at work, ha.
Album kind of lacks cohesiveness and might be a little too long. The song about her father beating her mom is clearly out of place, and the Spanish elements sprinkled throughout are cool but inconsistent. The rapper popping on for 30 seconds of "Dirrty" felt disrespectful to that genre as a whole.
Every member of the band working hard and working together to create a cohesive sound. Bravo!
Horrible and disconnected, lacking in cohesiveness. Like a guy came up with some beats after hearing that DnB was a thing and then sent it to the singer who was forced to just kind of make up some lyrics and make them fit in tunelessly.
Boring. They're a band, I guess...
Too many random noises sprinkled throughout and silence / nothing musical happening in Moonchild to be Great for me. "In the Court of the Crimson King" is a great track though.
I can see peoples' minds being absolutely blown by this when it came out, seeing as they're contemporaries with the likes of the Beatles and the Carpenters. Too experimental and abstract in many sections for my liking though.
"Scorpio" sucks. "The Message" is ok. "The adventures of..." is someone who's just discovered how a dj turntable works.
A lot of this is really dated though, and the album leans on good-natured silliness.
Silly and noisy in parts, this album is best when the band is all driving together towards their musical goals. They seemed to run out of inspiration halfway through though and the back half of the album was a slog.
Band isn't entirely playing together in some places in the album, like they just heard the singer come in with a great idea and they all just tried to wing it and play along. Is "Jemima Surrender" about rape? Couldn't wait for it to be over.
Great and groovin. Rhythm sections sounds perfectly in sync. I preferred the "jamacian version" frmo the 2001 "Deluxe edition" bc the bass seems over-emphasized to the point of distortion in the original.
This may turn into a 5 with repeated listens.
What terrible mastering, all the loud parts are distorted and over-modulated. Makes you understand how people could listen on super rolled-off speakers or phono cartridges and still think they sound good...
Songs are good, rockin and rollin and reelin, good musicianship, will never listen again :)
A Simple Desultory Philippic is both a hit track and apt impression of Bob Dylan? Lol. Either way, it's completely out of place on a bunch of nice songs that go together well by two musicians clearly at their artistic prime.
I was doing ok on this album until "Sylvia plath" which I thought "oh this song is awful it must be the album closer" but nope! Still 40 minutes of music to go...
Entire back half was a slog. Album seems devoid of originality and I can't really imagine why it's on a list of stuff that we "must" listen to before we die
Sounds nice, but devoid of creativity or melody or interesting musical ideas. 80s overproduction over meandering instrumentals.
This band is like... some guy wrote a bunch of poems, his neighbor happened to run a music studio and said "oh I've got a crack team of musicians who can make this into music for SURE!" then kinda produced this smash of weird lyrics and musical sounding noise with no direction or passion or cohesiveness
Pleasant to listen to , easy on the ears except for some shrill recording segments of her voice, that woman has some serious pipes and range tho.
Straightforward, take no prisoners unrelenting driving rhythms and melodies. Doesn't overstay its welcome (much) at 29 minutes. I guess it could be more varied in its sonics but they know what they're about.
I can see a generation of kids picking up a guitar after listening to this and then learning to play along.
Is that Cut Copy's Dan Whitford singing the woo-oohs in "I don't wanna walk around with you"? Sounds just like him.
Album has one dated misstep on "And you tell me" but apart from that it's fresh, creative, high-energy, nuanced, complex, and highly catchy.
WAY too much going on with this album.
If you look up "masterpiece" in the dictionary I'm pretty sure it just has this album cover
Pleasant to listen to, calm and soothing
Overhyped. Maybe it "reignited" jangly alt rock at the time, but the actual music just good, not great
You should count the number of times they say the word "yeah" on this album, that'd be a fun project too!
Have to ignore the incredibly over-dramatic stereo mix, which is very distracting, to get to the good music.
Ethos-wise, the pop world is still living in the hedonistic religion that these guys are espousing.
"califonia dreamin" is a banger obviously, but some of the non-singles are a slog.
Imagine you're a disillusioned, disenfranchised youth in 1982... your choices are Olivia Newton John, Joan Jett, or... this. I know which I'm pickin 10 times out of 10!
Lyrics are silly and mastering is awful and some of the songs on the back half are a silly slog, but the core guitar work is great. Hard to imagine that this is only 3 guys making so much noise.
Not a big fan of the vibrato technique that she uses. Other than that... it's... fine
from its first note to its last fade-out, this album is packed with sonically boundary-pushing, technologically accomplished, polished melodies, and highly catchy music.
One of my favorites (and my father's, and my son's) of all time!
Jangly and whiny, pretty straight-up rock n roll, I'm not sure why people fawn over these guys really.
Still, some great hooks and catchy songwriting on the second half of the album. Maybe could improve with a couple more spins.
Refreshingly original and inimitable, this deserves a 5
(until that last song, what were they thinking? save that for a b side)
Another fresh and timeless classic - the opening track still sounds like all doom metal released 55 years later, riffs all over are gargantuan, drumming and basswork are excellent, and Ozzy is ... there
Too much meandering in the final track for a 5 but it gets pretty close!
Actually really good. Sounds fresh, features several very impressive cameos, no distracting skits, clearly talented rappers and producers feature, and Timbaland keeps the "sex noises" to a minimum.
Meh. Dated, shrill, boring
"Moving Pictures" is much better
Funky grooves! The first half has some real 10/10 bangers, but it takes a turn for the mundane during All About Love
Imagine if you were so creative and such a good musician that you could break out of a "writer's block slump" with a double album spanning multiple genres with varied riffs, instrumentation, etc, for your casual third album in as many years!
If only the singer didn't sound like he just got a novacaine shot in his tongue, and they cut out some of the "pretty good" tracks in the middle, this would be a 5.
Maybe on repeated listens it'll get up there. A solid sonic onslaught of 65 minutes.
Meticulously-crafted male-female pop rock perfection
It was ok. Jangly americana noise folk that was way too long and mostly just "there" instead of intensely melodic
Some very good songs here, pretty consistent quality throughout, love that it ends with a repetition of "you're not alone"
Idk how a band can be both so noisy and so boring at the same time. I don't get the music industry's preoccupation with these guys and won't remember a single line from this album tomorrow.
Silly. The thing where they trade words back and forth and between different sides of the stereo mix is really distracting and corny. They yell all their lyrics at the exact same tone almost every time. The guitar bits are cool I guess.
"You be illin'" is hilarious though, and I'd listen to Rock This Way and It's Tricky again.
I cannot stand these guys. Just a bunch of noise at 500 hz and above, tuneless meandering with pretty instrumentation.
Rockin! Straight up unbelievable to think that this album is contemporary with CSNY's "Deja Vu" which was also "pushing the boundaries of guitar playing" lol
I don't get the hype (recurring theme for this list)
Alternates between boring kind of "just there" atmospheric rock, pre-Coldplay influence, and noise. I like the ending song.
British people pretending to be southern Americans? Ok
Very annoying singer
Last track kind of sounds like it could have come off the Godspell soundtrack
I actually dig the "female krautrock" thing, but the writing could be significantly improved and the singing is nothing special. "Ravenspoint" is a misstep on an otherwise-solid collection of songs.
All in all though I just can't fathom why this made the cut for being a must-listen when modern classics like Tame Impala's "Currents" are absent.
First two tracks are jammin', but "where you love" is distractingly bad.
Overall good improvisational skills and interesting sounds. I particularly liked where they worked in Western trail music to "Calvary".
Had to listen to this one a couple times to really get a feel for what was going on. It's pretty fragmented in style and scope but the musical ideas laid out all have merit - I just feel like they could have gone together better with more time in the studio maybe. Overall though it's a high energy romp.
And another appearance of the Cut Copy oOOoooOOs in "Smash It Up"!
Good synthesis of New Wave synth music and "rock and roll" writing, with plenty of well-deserved hits
Hated almost every second of this. Angular guitar noises, terrible voice, bad melodies, silly do-wap 60s stuff. Maybe it hit in 1965 or whatever and made the ladies go crazy, but I'm no 1965 16 year old girl. "going home" is about 11 minutes too long. Misogyny abounds. Not sure how people can like this stuff.
Lots of meaning behind the supposedly-simple lyrics, and great melodic flow.
also, "till the morning comes" is one of the best songs ever.
Idk what to think about this one really. It's full of bad messages (Outlaw) but also good ones? (Young N******z, Dear Mama, Can U Get Away). The flow is great, the beats are consistently excellent, his more "philosophical" stuff is eye-opening, but every other word is the N or F word...
So bad. One guy pressing a note on a synthesizer for whole songs, random "white guy rap" breaking out, heavy metal blast beats, whiney singing, 10k treble spike and hollowed out mids at 250hz, 0 bass under 100hz... nearly unlistenable.
Woodpecker From Mars is cool (without lyrics, I'll point out), if the bass weren't playing all the way up at 2khz that'd be great.
War Pigs is probably the best effort here, but - it's just a worse version of the Black Sabbath song it's covering (which is excellent).
Last song is a whiney hard rock snarl about a pedophile played over jazzy piano? oooooook
It could be good (or at least "better") if they could settle on one style and get a decent sound engineer.
It's fine. Trip-hop beats and soul singin
Fine until that last track, which is a giant waste of time
This is a 3 "I liked it" brought up by "Every Breath You Take" which is one of the best songs of all time. Immediately following that with "King of Pain" and "Wrapped Around your Finger", which also appear on the Police's Greatest Hits album, is a great run.
"Mother" is awful and completely out of place here - leaves the album feeling disjointed and not very "synchronous." The rest of it is there, being Police-y
Annoying. The audio is so compressed and her voice so grating that I can't get past the sound to the "cool" neo-soul stuff going on (which is not that original itself). Let's throw some profanity and drug / sex addiction glorification on grandma's favorite music and make people pine for a fake past!
One has to wonder how much different this would be if it weren't Amy fronting this band, something tells me it'd be almost all the same because Mark Ronson did all the hard work here and she just penned some angry jealous self-destructive lyrics to smash on the top.
4 tracks in and I'm making bets with myself about whether this album will go above 60 bpm at all... truly horrible so far. "(he's got the) whole world in his hands" sounds like it was recorded in a can by a potato.
New York City Song is decent but still ... never gonna listen to this album again.
Raspy-voiced dude moanin' and blowin' a harmonica over acoustic guitar is not for me. I'm sure there's someone out there who enjoys this...
Jammin' them down-low blues. Exquisite guitar work. The deluxe version flows better but is super dang long. Imagine being so good that you could play a guitar solo essentially for 2 hours...
I liked it. Good tunes, good accompaniment, a little "disney choir" at times, and combining Vol 1 and 2 makes it way too long, but it's a pleasant listen at least.
Hated it. Every second was like torture to my ears. When I thought it couldn't get any worse, it hit "Honky Tonky Angels" or whatever and this went from a -1 to a -2
Would rather endure physical violence than listen to this again.
"woohoo my band and I can make some noise"
Too much silliness abounds in this album to concentrate on it or take it seriously. The highs are pretty high ("Me Myself and I", sampling Steely Dan, the one with the yodeling, the wordplay throughout about "jenifa") but the lows (the skits, the orgee, some of the boring "yeah I'm so great" stuff near the end) drag it down. I respect the originality on display here, but taken at face value it sounds more like an experimental mixtape than an influential album that I'd want to listen to again.
I need to spend more time with this one. It's kind of "intentionally off-kilter" which makes it a jarring listen, but... it's supposed to be like that.
The last song is very good.
Fine. Sounds like music!
Trippy lyrics and instrumentation. His voice and vocal delivery style remind me a lot of Nick Drake.
Why is this on this list? Very uneven. The rap song is awful.
Punk meets American blues? Really interesting concept. Lyrics veer into "profound" territory. Melodic grooves really get going in the latter halves of the longer songs. "The Doors" vibes for sure. Too much "intentional noise" to be a "really liked it" but there's definitely something here.
djooour SKEEEEEEEINNNN oh yeah I SKIIIN AND BOOOOOONES
turn EEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIN to something BEAUTIFULLLL
Brilliant (debut!) album from a brilliant band. Each member contributes equally, I miss this version of "awkwardly excellent college kids" Coldplay before they turned into the Chris Martin Pop Hit Machine
The opening chord! The best guitar solo ever! The orchestral reprise halfway through the album! Predicting the demise of the band as well as American capitalism in the last track! What a great album.
Pretty good pretty good, need more time with it. Bittersweet Symphony is obviously the standout, and the rest lacks compelling hooks. Pleasant noise though.
A marvel of building, swirling sonic design, blended with impeccable beats, catchy melodies, and a timeless message of scandalous fidelity. One of my favorites of all time.
reminds me of a worse John Denver.
So many waltzes.
Boring. Twangy. Grating and irritating by "Blue Canadian Rockies"
Big throwback to the Pandora days. Pretty varied album actually. The highs are really high. The filler on the back half of the album I definitely could have died without having listened to.
big brass band Jammin' (reminds me a bit of mardi gras music) and singing about Africa.
Not much here but not bad as background music.
the trumpet hitting the highest notes it can hit ever might be the most annoying noise in the world.
Otherwise, fine, but not my jam. A blitz of notes that sound like they go together but lack "song"ness
Wow never have I known that an album was going to get a 1 so fast. Still, I persisted and listened to the whole thing.
The guitar tone is discordant with the general honky-tonky vibes in some places, more of a new wave tone than twangy. Odd
Kind of sounds like my aunt with a southern accent? Use of growling technique all over is distracting, but goodness can that woman belt em out
Jangly and same-y, but "And I love her" is a great track
Imitation Beatles. "Band 6" is stupid. "Mr Webster" I guess is their "Eleanor Rigby". "Shades of Grey" is worse Simon and Garfunkel. "Zilch" we're back into stupid territory.
Had an awful time forcing myself to listen to this.
Wow what a refreshing change after an awful Monkees album. Blistering guitar speed, varied song structures, a good length. Only thing holding this back from a 5 right off the bat is that I don't recognize anything on the album and it's not very "hooky"
I started this journey with a "judge the album by how consistently truthful it is" and this... happens to be the most truthful album I've heard yet. Incredibly challenging to listen to (that's the point), "Kim" is the worst there, and "Ken Kaniff" is a close second. Clearly he's enjoying playing the line between "am I insane or is it all a joke?" and he runs both directions while exploring that theme. It's immature, incredibly vulgar, disrespectful, violent, misogynistic, homophobic, racist... but again, that's the point. In a world devoid of morals because it's rejected God, this kind of behavior is, idk, expected.
The beats are awesome and would be a pleasure to listen to without any lyrics. I'm going to knock a star off because the guest appearances seem like clowns next to Eminem's effortless flow.
My right ear heard a little James Brown and a lot of screaming
Being black and LSD-level creative musical free association are two things I don't identify with. He sounds like a poet though.
There's genius here but maybe it's not for me? Can hear the fingerprints all over Blackstar though.
That last track through where he brings it all together is boss.
Just rock n roll Noise. I liked the introduction of the sax most of the way through though.
Ahh the 80s, when everyone chased this man's prolific output.
Overlong by 40 minutes, boring 80s drum machines, way overproduced tuneless pieces about havin sex with everyone walking around, danny elfman-level sound effects and silliness
"I could never take the place of your man" is nice, but it also appears to have actual instruments, so it's a misplacement on the album. His music videos are great, high-energy cast of millions affairs, but they significantly improve on what's in the music.
Pleasant sounds in a language I don't understand... I guess I can die now that I've heard this album
Really liked this, nice harmonic rhythms, varied sonics, tuneful melodies . It's no "Out Of Time" but it's still very nice
I listen to this album every October on repeat. Meticulously crafted, funky pop perfection
Boring, slow, repetitive, and uninspired. "Essential" albums shouldn't sound so lame that I could have recorded them in my basement without any musical experience or skill.
Really enjoyed this. Latin vibes, pretty well-recorded, high energy, not annoying in its use of percussion, instant mood booster - makes me want to throw a cocktail party or eat guacamole!
My 8 year old son while listening: "why does it sound like he's just turning the pitch knob on my moog modular analog synth?"
My 6 year old daughter: "I'm falling asleep, this is really boring. It wasn't so bad when he was singing"
Overlong, boring, repetitive, sounds like it was recorded inside a can of Pringles. Terrible synth work. Horrible monologues. Why did they think in the 70s that spring reverb sounded anything like space?
Horribly meandering, over-ambitious, terribly mastered, and yet very fun and silly.
We used to listen to a MIDI file of the title track "BATOUT.mid" all the time growing up while playing the board game Payday, and for that it brings the score up to a 3
Enjoyable jams with unique latin twists and guitar wails
Pretty easy-listening, sparse instrumentation, tight harmonies, and yet I still hated it - something about it reminds me of grating nails on a chalkboard. Super simple blues chords with a bunch of boring aimless guitar noodling in the background
I liked the funkier electronic dance tracks but hated all the violence inherent in some of the darker stuff
Really enjoyed this, listened to it a couple of times in a row. Soft sonic textures and a lot of variety for a "folk singer" in the 80s
Great album but has its weak points, feels like it was rushed a bit in production, which would explain the strange choice to add some live songs instead of doing those in the studio as well as the rest of the album...
"The Boxer" and the title track are absolute bangers.
First song is stupid. Second is devoid of any originality or tunefulness whatsoever. Third is a waste of life. "War on War" sounds like an awful version of War On Drugs (great band). The rest of the songs are boring with nice moments overshadowed by noise. Now for a nap, please...
I really cannot say enough about Dr Dre's talent. These beats are incredible - varied, funky, possessing incredible flow, super modern sounding, bouncy and danceable.
The lyrics are very very silly, there's almost more f bombs (129), "dog" (152), and n words (121) than "the" (558). Obsessed with sex, drugs and alcohol, and violence.
he also seems to have a lot of friends who can also rap, another "cast of millions" affair but it works really well here
overall someone should release these gangsta rap albums with the vocals stripped out and they'd be fire
This is horrible, just because you are good at guitar and can produce noise with your buds does not mean you're good (much less "essential") music
At least it's high energy
Whiny jangles (and also Wonderwall and Champagne Supernova)
I really dislike the male-female "call and response" campy thing that the B52s do, and they do it here too.
Bjork's first album? Better listen to it before we die!
Math rock is not something I enjoy, however this is super well done. "House of Cards" is a great track. I could see this becoming a 5 upon further listening / dissection
Great grooves, intricate and studied songcraft, good and varied instrumentation. Overall really good cohesive album!
This was surprisingly great, I wonder why I never gave it a fair shake when I was younger. Singles are obviously strong, but so is some of the back-half material - Nightswimming and Find the River end things well.
ungood. A couple of 5/5 singles, and then rest is experimental "let's figure out how to sound like the Police" meandering
Great music for lazing around with an exotic cocktail in your hand
Over-earnest vocals, terrible smooshy mastering, jangley echoes of 50s rock n roll - this album has all the trademarks of a 1. Took everything in my power to not skip any (all) songs on it.
Pretty sure the bass on "hoochie" just played the same note the entire thing...
"One Day Like This" makes the rest of the album worth the listen. Sadboi 2008-core
There might be some English on this album?
80s Beach House with fewer melodic elements.
Pretty tuneful actually. Just too bad that the way the singer chooses to portray himself is as a giant creep.
Like a sad Nick Drake without the interesting song structure and tunefulness that makes him interesting
I'm not an unbiased reviewer because I'm a big Sigur Ros fan (wearing a shirt of theirs from a show in 2013 as I type this).
I was tempted to give this a 4 star review because it's not actually their best work, but ... nahhh. "It's a classic and everyone should hear it" is absolutely true here, even if it's a bit slow and annoying in its connective tissue between tracks at times.
Ethereal and otherworldly, while still remaining very much "rock" music, this is the essence of post-rock at its core. Good enough to inspire one to travel to Iceland to see what it's all about.
A venn diagram of things I dislike: "girl rock", pop punk, 90s music, thin production, syllable bending to fit the rhythms instead of using the proper lyrics, over-dubbed backup vocals while claiming to be "gritty", songs built out of a single uninspiring guitar riff, one single f bomb to be "edgy" but still Pg13. Blegh
Suffers from being about 25 minutes too long. Obviously they were having a lot of fun! Absolute classics here "Ms Jackson", "So Fresh and Clean", BOB
Maybe a little dated, but packed back-to-back with singalong goodness, great harmonies, inventive marriage of strings and rock, supreme melody and hit-making by Jeff Lynne
Really not bad. I like the band's contributions, because this could really sparse otherwise. Very Western singer-songwriter vs honkey-tonk
Some good noises, but mostly aimless jams
Really enjoyed this, smooth jazz vibes and pleasant tinkling on the rhodes
Talking Heads are great, but kind of challenging to listen to as an "album band". This one is full of discordance and paranoia and leaves the listener on edge and wanting more melody. Genius, but not altogether pleasant.
Get that downtuned acoustic guitar, man! *vocal fry for days*
I can see how "I'm going where the cold wind blows" could be an epic 'last lyric" to perform on an album, if Kurt Cobain had intended it to end that way...
Pretty good stuff though
Wow that was unexpectedly epic on the second half starting with "Waiting for the Big One". Really liked all that grandiose-ness and of course Solisbury Hill, this one will have to be a re-listen for me, which is surprising considering I think I've listened to all of Peter Gabriel's back catalog in the past.
Edit: listened again and this is way too uneven / "quirky" to be a 4.
Noise, not music. 41 minutes of my life I won't get back. I can't imagine anyone putting this on a record player in 1978 and thinking "oh yeah this is the future of music, I'm gonna play this on repeat for a year!", much less the record executives that let this through. Inexplicable that they'd leave *all of classical music* off of this list and yet let this through.
"AB/7A" is listenable and portends electro-dance instrumental music of 1980 ("Music From The 21st Century" (1982) comes to mind), but it's nothing that Kraftwerk hadn't been doing 4 years before on Autobahn, or Jarre on Oxygen in 1976, or Tangerine Dream on literally any of their 1970s stuff. Those artists do it with much more melody, originality, and tunefulness, as opposed to this, which seems like pretense, and intentionality off-putting noise.
Heck, for that matter, Bowie's Berlin phase had started by this time, and had already crossed these "dark experimental synthesizer" domains, and Bowie's about as "mainstream" as you can get.
Noise, lots of noise, much too long. We are rebels, woo!
Solid rock but nothing really memorable apart from the liberally-applied f bombs
I cannot stand his vocal delivery or the fact that half the time it sounds like he's singing into a box or intentionally distorted to try and cover up the awful noise.
Also, 50s do-wap rock revival? Just what we needed! /s
I was with this until "Observation is no Crime", which just got polyrhythmically annoying
Really good. More "pop" piano than Jazz, but pure improvisation and remarkably melodic themes pop in and out throughout.
As the only solo piano album on the list so far, I'm thinking that maybe more pianos should be de-tuned and forced to be played by jazz masters (if you don't know the story of this album, definitely look it up)!
Really uneven, second half sounds like an entirely different album. Her wailed lyrics are unintelligible and maybe would be better in a different language? Better "pop girl rock" music here than the "punk" efforts in the first 6 tracks.
Oftentimes sounds like the lyrics are completely detached from the music, like the band recorded the song in one room, then shipped it across the world to their singer, who sat on it for 12 months and then slapped some half-finished personal poetry overtop
"Brass in pocket" almost stretches this to a 2, but... nah.
These guys certainly know what they're about. Heavy and dramatic throughout, album only drags a little on Mailman and Spoonman
Wow good grief is this annoying. Nice beats obscured by intentionally distorted rapping. Like they engineered it to be played really loud in a car rollin around residential streets neighborhoods and have everyone roll their eyes and flip em the bird.
Then the second half of the album they moved to "let's just have a good time" and made "throw it on at a party" jams
- edit - listened to this a second time and I now understand it as party dance / hype music so deserves a better score than my initial "why is this so annoying" reaction
Weird one. Sounds like someone's angry grandma decided to release a really spiteful new wave album with a backing band that actually rocks.
Final track is searing, "Guilt" sounds just like the Alan Parsons Project, and Stevie Winwood's synths sound great, but unsure if I'll ever return to this
What in the world is this? A blend of Chicago, masturbatory Jazz improv and drum solos, classic Christmas music instrumentation, Godspell musical vibes, and gratuitous phaser effects. Disjointed. Not quite "unlistenable" but it's close.
Good musical ideas here (mostly coming out of David Bowie in the background, if my ears don't mistake me), but obscured by a wall of noise and awful shrieking "singing".
Fine - tuneful folk, could be turned into bangers by people covering it
Instrumentation is really strangely varied from song to song, sometimes they think they're a rock band, sometimes just some guys in a pub with a guitar and female lead, sometimes they're a shanty group.
Guess I can die now that I've listened to this.
Kraftwerk was just fine without being extended to 8 minutes and having people yell over it, thank you very much
All the hits! Great musical performances, just a shame it sounds like it was recorded off a vinyl player at the end of a hallway, with 0 bass, dynamics, highs, or stereo separation
Straight up and down Blues, with the world's most harmonica tone
Last.fm says I've listened to this album at least 18 times, so I'm pretty confident in my score here
Eclectic group of songs, mysterious and literary lyrics, maybe a little too long for its own good.
A french language album on here? Unexpected
This one plays more like an EP than a full album. Groovy instrumentation, no clue what he's saying (though I have some guesses and I'd assume he's pretty horny). I can see how this had a big impact on French music going forward because I can hear it in the work of Air, etc.
Truly one of the best albums of all time, banger after banger. I remember listening to this on a walkman in 6th grade and being floored by the musicality, impact, and mystery of the music and lyrics. Songs are fully fleshed-out and deliver exactly what they're supposed to. Synths are organic and soulful, rhythms are world-inspired but never contrived.
Kind of lacking in cohesiveness but each song has its own feel and are actually pretty good, though not "catchy" at all. Actually-Listenable experimentation
Try as I might, I am just not much of a brooding Londoner in the middle of the rainy night in 1992
Commits the Unforgivable Sin of music, namely, being super boring
vocals are buried in the mix and a huge wash of reverb. song construction is non-existent, like a guy who just learned the bass came up with some riffs and then built up a bunch of other instruments around them over the next few years. Bleh
Again, unforgivably boring. She has a nice voice but these are all the same slow song in the same minor key over and over.
This dude might have the worst voice ever. Unfathomable how annoying the end of "Hand in Hand" is.
songs might be fine if they removed him as the band lead
The sound of a man accepting his impending death and loss of faith.
Not exactly "uplifting" but scores highly in truthfulness
The weaker tracks on the album (Cassandra, Like an Angel Passing Through My Room, Two For The Price of One, Should I Laugh or Cry) take away from the rest of the album, which features some of the best but least-known ABBA tracks, namely "The Day Before You Came" and "Slipping through my fingers".
The singles (One of Us, Head Over Heels, Under Attack) are characteristically great.
Proof that this list is a joke
Unable to listen past track 4 without having to turn it off so that I could concentrate on Work
Dancey silliness from the rhythm section of the Talking Heads
