Incredibly groovy, wildly catchy and memorable. Found myself re-listening to most of the songs after I had given the record an initial once-over just because I wanted to hear it again! Springsteen's voice has such a great quality to it, and the instrumentals are just larger than life constantly. "Backstreets" -> "Born to Run" -> "She's the One" is such a FANTASTIC sequence of songs, I was wowed by it. "Thunder Road" is also a highlight, along with "Jungleland." Love this one!

I think I'm gonna need to re-listen to this one a few more times before I can give definitive thoughts. It's on the longer side, and I overall enjoyed the experience and there were several highlights for me. One of the things I really liked is how striking the first track is, it's so eerie right from the get-go and intrigued me immediately. I also really enjoyed "Seductive Barry," "Help the Aged" and several other tracks. Overall a good listen, though I'd like to dig more into the lyrics and such at another time.

I think this is one of the greatest albums ever made. Yeah that's about it.

Okay, this album is so ridiculously catchy, groovy, and beautiful that I can't really fully put it into words. There were moments while working that I had to fully stop what I was doing and just sit and appreciate the music for a second... it's THAT good. Aretha was truly on another level.

Amazing, amazing, amazing. What a goddamn treat to listen to, I could put this on repeat for an entire day and not get sick of it. Full of such emotion and energy... it's SO good. Going to have so many of these melodies and motifs stuck in my head now.

What a stunning record. It's crazy to me that this was their debut, it sounds so incredibly refined and impressively put together. I ended up listening to this about 3 times through, and I think that my overall thoughts are that this is a fantastic listen, with highlight after highlight present, and only a couple tunes that I wasn't so keen on. My favorite part about this record is hands down the basslines, holy god they are so groovy on literally every track. I mean like... good lord just listen to "New Feeling," "Tentative Decisions," "The Book I Read," "Psycho Killer"... I could go on. Absolute masterful display of songwriting and instrumentation here.

More Britpop! I can't even be mad, I love it. Got this one for today's album and I became compelled to do a bit of looking into what Britpop actually is, and I find it helps a lot to know that it was made as a response to grunge, a genre which I hold very dear to my heart. Listening to this record with that context in mind made me appreciate it more overall, and contrast it with bands of that scene. I think I liked this record more than This is Hardcore overall. A real treat to listen to! I dig the pacing, the vocals, the instrumentals... yeah it's just quite good. Some sick, larger-than-life moments perfectly mixed in with lower and slower moments. Honestly I was reminded of The Smashing Pumpkins several times throughout this... made me want to listen to Siamese Dream. Will definitely be revisiting this one!