Lou Reed has the unique privilege of being unanimously the biggest asshole to ever appear at work. I'll spare the specifics for now, since it's not like he'll be making a comeback. I like the idea and ambition of the rock opera, I'd say it gets 80% there. So music gets 4 stars, and the person gets another -1 star.
They didn't transfer my notes, so I guess no real review. Bob Power mixed/produced this album, is a total badass, and I owe him a good chunk of my career. So five stars!
I like some Depeche Mode, but this is a big miss for me. If you take all the interesting stuff out of Kraftwerk, you end up with this album. I get they're trying for a concept album, but when your concept is bland and doesn't matter.... Give me a Pink Floyd any day. 2 stars since it's still music.
R.E.M. has been presented to be as the best thing since sliced bread so many times that I can't take them seriously. I get it, man on the moon, blah blah blah. Illogically, the lead singer's voice is just annoying. I'll try to give them a fair shake, look at the rating for that. The review is for snark. Pilgrimage-why does the drum sound like a nasty cough Laughing-never knew laughter could be so plain and repetitive Talk About The Passion-Sunday Service at church? Perfect Circle-I know there's a melody line here, but his singing makes it sound ridiculously monotone
Santana is what you get when you take some potentially solid jazz, cross it with a jam band, then make it as bland and uninteresting as possible. Cap it off with tacky early 70s stereo production (only hard panning allowed!). I'll ignore the fact that it's even more boring to perform these tunes than listen for these ratings. I'm not saying Santana is bad. Just that it's boring and repetitive. Even Santana's guitar playing is white bread--good, but doesn't build or go anywhere. At the end of the album, things started to get interesting. But then I noticed Tidal had started auto-playing Frank Zappa after the Santana finished.
Fuck, literally the first thing on this album is early stereo BS, and they did it wrong to boot. Assuming I'm listening to a right handed drummer, the snare should be on the right.... Neil Young gets credit for being a lyricist who's voice is dramatically better than Dylan's, even if not what anyone would call pretty. The album features a pretty legendary lineup throughout. The band is great, and arrangements are pretty much perfection--simple, yet nuanced, and leaves space for a nice eb and flow, and lets the vocal harmonies hit you in the face. A heart of Gold is a classic, but I think Old Man is my favorite here. The range is awesome, and the harmony parts are a sucker punch in the best way. It's cool that Neil Young recorded with the LSO for this album, but in practice it just feels out of place. This is one of the things that keeps me from 5 stars.
Starting out strong with shitty synth strings. Tom Watts-esqe vocals are the cool way to not sing. I like the band, a simple but solid groove. Interesting, but nothing flashy. Every time the shitty synth strings happen it ruins things. The middle of the album falls into being a bit same-y and generic. Not bad, but living up to the 'chore' in the album title. Punishing sun is a bit generic
Fucking pigs. Blue lives matter my ass. Take your thin blue line and.... They're British police? No guns? Not even badges? That's embarrassing... Damn. That Stings... Message in a Bottle is perfect. Please, tell me how you'd make it better. You can't. It's a jam, it's catchy, and it flows. It gets a mild infraction for the early stereo high hat panned hard left, but I'll forgive it. The rest of this album will need to kill brain cells to get less than 5 stars. Indeed, they'll be sending out an SOS. Sending out an SOS. Sending out and SOS. Sending out an SOS. Hate on it if you want, that's your decision. Rest of the album is fine. The Police can get a little same-y, and I think they admit a good amount of the record is filler. It's fine.
If only Paul McCartney had lived, then we wouldn't have needed Paul Simon.
The Beach Boys music is so formulaic it's for babies (of all kinds). There's nothing special or thematic with this record. You're really better off getting a Beach Boys greatest hits instead. The Beach Boys do their thing, and do it well though. I'll give them that. But damn, they can't end a song. The Beach Boys have more fades than Lucas had wipes in Star Wars. I'm adjusting my ratings to be more conscious that these are supposed to be the best records ever released, not what I'd give them as a generic record I happened across.
This is objectively worse than the Beach Boys, but it's definately going go get a higher rating. This isn't about quality, or musicianship, or any of that. This is distilled idiocy and I love it. New Wave is bad, and I like to think it knows its bad. All of the jams could have been written by a kindergartener who's eaten way too much Halloween candy. If the bass player has to play more than 4 different notes in a given section, it's a record. The song structure has everyone thinking "are they lost?" "did they forget there's another part to the song?" "is there even another part to this song?" Yes, some of the songs are bad. Some are offensive. Or both! But since I only have two brain cells, some of them make me grin. I want to believe his cover of Satisfaction has Mick Jagger rolling in his grave--he's not dead either? Rolling in his vampire casket then. The B-Side can fuck right off though. That was a waste of time that knocked us back to 2 stars. 2.8 for the A side, 1.5 for the B side.
I know this is an important record, but I have a hard time giving a shit. I might be in a bad mood today.
It's a bummer they didn't manage to record all the instrumentation. The synths/samples really drag the whole thing down, especially when contrasted with what they did manage to get on tape. While I enjoyed it, I don't think there's anything revolutionary here, so if they had managed to finish the record, I would've given it 4 stars--and maybe consider listening again in the future. 3 stars for the ambition.
This one's not dead either?? It's mega but not really death??? Megadeth--one of the most tumultuous bands of its time, at least that managed to live. I'm not the best for metal history, but 1990 seems a bit late to call this record groundbreaking. That's not an insult though--the band is tight as hell, and the vocal approach and treatment is solid, even if it doesn't quite match up to the rest of the band. I blame 90s CD production, but the album is lacking some dynamics that'd really put it over the top. One easy example--the mode change in Hangar 18 could've been a really epic moment, but since everything is the same volume, it gets glossed over. Even a bit later in the same song--let the band drop back a touch in volume for the solos, then they can jump back up and hit you in the face for the riff!
This is another one where the production is gonna drive me up the wall. All the sampled instruments on the opening track want me to yeet this record into oblivion. WOW YOU GOT A CASIO KEYBOARD, NOW YOU'RE THE BEST!!! Use that pitch wheel! Thankfully they seem to ditch that shit after the first track, but man, what a way to make a bad first impression. The vocal performance is fine, but the lyrics and presentation come across as really sappy, and overly dramatic. "Where is her head?" Maybe try looking above the shoulders? This isn't hard. Kiss/this smile/while? The easy rhymes would be more tolerable if you didn't pick the simplest/laziest one to repeat a million times. The longer the album goes, the more I realize it's just the same vocal 'melody' over and over again. Maybe in a different key. You don't even need to read or process music to get it--every vocal line is just -_-¯- Every. Single. One. Sorry if I ruined it for you. Oh, and now they've brought in the synth bass from Seinfeld! Classic. Is it over yet? New favorite lyric "like blood to chocolate fall," because it's that hard to rhyme with "recall." Nothing rhymes with recall at all. I'm hitting a wall. All I can do is stall. If I could play, I would've balled. 1.6, decent voice, and it seems like you kinda tried to do whatever you're doing. I know we'll get worse than this.
Does anyone care about anything on this album beyond Highway to Hell?
Lou Reed has the unique privilege of being unanimously the biggest asshole to ever appear at work. I'll spare the specifics for now, since it's not like he'll be making a comeback. I like the idea and ambition of the rock opera, I'd say it gets 80% there. So music gets 4 stars, and the person gets another -1 star.
I'll be honest, I skimmed this one. But gets points for being classic.
Liking Soundgarden is the 90s version of liking Nickleback. But here we are.
No.
Presented by Paul Simon's savoir complex
+1 for being a nice dude
WTF is a compilation doing on a collection of albums? We have this amazing collection of paintings, check out this photograph! Sure, some good curation makes a compilation work as a whole, but an album works by design. It's a different thing! It's especially annoying since Miles has multiple incredible albums. That said, this highlights Miles at his most approachable. Solid band, solid arrangements, innovative without the 'irritation' of some of his more ambitious material later on.
Unremarkable
This isn't horrible without the horror! Some funky sections, but for the most part it's on the interesting side of weird.
A surprisingly deep glimpse into Kanye to come. The left field gospel is all there, all the desperate measures to appeal to the current hip-hop mainstream is there. The shocking thing is how great of an ALBUM this is. It builds interests, and gets better as it goes along. Even the weaker songs provide something different, something interesting, and it all moves things along. Yes, Kanye is a lunatic now. In a lot of ways, he was a lunatic. But damn, he's a creative force in this era. 4 stars only because it's a bit pandering, and I know what's coming.
I hate to give them credit, but I'm going to.