Sweet, late 60s original hippy vibes. Easy to listen to, but nothing really stands out for me on this. I feel they have their best work very much ahead at this point!
Some beautiful sad, real sentiments and washy lush sonic-scapes. The wrestling with God is both appealing and off-putting for me. I got quite bored and had to take a break about 2/3rds of the way in though. I had listened to some of the somgs off this before but not the whole album. Quite samey in places with occasional flourishes. Feels like it would benefit from cutting down to the old school 45 mins maybe. Again very of its time.
Very much what I think of when I think of dad rock. Only 30 mins but I got pretty bored. American Girl at the end sort of brought it back. Quite catchy and the sort of thing I could (and probably have) enjoy dancing to at Dad Rock at the Hope and Ruin. Over all though, this just entrenched me in my feelings on Tom Petty.
I wouldn't really listen to this now, but it was something I loved and was surrounded by 20-odd years ago. It was funny to revisit it. Energetic and throw away and big. Death drives and love-woes under the indie-club lights. It's not for me now, it's for me and my friends in our early 20s. And some music needs to be for odd, jerky, awkward kids. I think it holds up better than a lot of indie from that time, but that's probably not saying much.
Evocative. Miserable. Enjoyable. An emptiness in the sound that feels intentional and like a grey 80s day on a boarded up highstreet with towerblocks. Swishy synth sounds. Drained vocals. The hits are songs I have played and heard a million times. I mostly kinda enjoyed the rest but also felt a bit weighed down. I liked the abstract number at the end, which I hadn't heard before.
Great to revisit this. I still love the straight-up, dramatic, brilliantly executed instrumentation and wild, dark, playful poetry. Gloria and Land: Horses.. were always my favourites and still still stand out to me with their 60s R&B/soul references, semi-religious/sacrareligious vibes, and particular playfulness in the lyrics. There's something really brilliant for me in how it plays with and twists rock'n'roll story tropes and imagery, and that was certainly a lot of the appeal when I was younger and more obsessed with that stuff. I enjoyed the whole thing though, just as it started to get a bit samey something shifts up, a well structured album in that way. Kimberley and Elegie also stood out.
I'd like to spend some time with other Patti Smith records, I haven't done much of that.
This album still absolutely kicks it. So fun and bolshy. Of its time in a fun way. Nostalgic for me for several periods of my life, and I think also just a solid album. Well structured. Entertaining. Well put together, exciting, mid-90s (popish, rapish)rave. Playing at shock value in a way I find myself throughly respecting looking back at how rave culture was perceived at the time. Tbf this came out a month or two before my 15th birthday when i was already obsessed with their hits off this and Music For The Jilted Generation, and loving it in that teen way and then again later as a raver through my late teens, 20s and 30s defo plays into it, but yeah. It does exactly what it sets out to do with aplomb. Banger.
Started out well. Into the opening track, didn't mind it being long at all. Golden Years is one of my all time favs. But felt boring and self indulgent by the end, last track reminded me of the music of boringly self-indulgent friends. Overall gonna give it a 4 because it has one of my favourite songs on it and was mostly enjoyable.
Fine I guess, for what it is. Nothing to write home about. I was trying to think what might be interesting about it beyond just being connected to CSN... I guess maybe 69 is early for this sort of thing, particular style of solo guy from band does kind of dull meander album. Maybe? I can't say it feels like something that needs marking anyway.
I wrote the above before Arlen did their digging out from the book. Gonna leave as is. Lol.
Found this pretty boring. Miserable drunk white boomer men music. Claiming to give itself knowing glances, but they feel not very knowing. Of its time in a bad way. Trundled along ok I guess, and something in his vocal style appeals to a part of me... but not for me.
Ah, oof, it's amazing pop music, mostly utterly brilliant with a couple of clangers (no one needs The Girl Is Mine and it peters out kinda floppily after being so strong and ordered in such an engaging way for almost the whole thing). It's so tied up in my past. I love the intros (Billie Jean!), outros, nonsense "youa vegetable!" Also tho it's not just PYT that sits different now, and it'sgard yo feel the wild abandon it was all about. Oh Michael, you talented creepy pedo.
I think that review Felix shared can't be bettered tbh. Classic album, but pedo. But with some reticence I'm giving it a 4.
Plenty to like about this and also a bit dull in places. Nice to hear something new that caught my attention. Hallucinations was a highlight. I loved the percussion and weird sounds on that.
The late 60s vocal styles and sensibilities appeal to me. The warbling about a woman and fantasy wotsits a bit less so. I would give this a 3.45 if I could.
I love this album. Part of that is nostalgia from my childhood and from various phases of life, returning new and different each time.
Part of it is the imperfect connection it gives to South Africa through the amazing musicians he worked with to make it, a home in that for me due to my own complex relationship to that part of the world. A lot of it is their contributions and the wild expansiveness in much of the sound, the musical dances and interplays. Something too in that 'working together', the interweaving.
It's also the mastery with which it's crafted as an album imo, the way the ordering of the songs adds and builds and takes you on a proper journey.
I find a playful, emotional, expansive, every day human religious undercurrent in it that is right up my alley too.
Some aspects of the context of this album and some of the lyrics on some tracks seem very of their time and a turn off, but in general it's just so damn beautiful imo.
Chugger chugger yellow howl proto-punk/driving garage that I feel has its place but not so much in my life these days. I Need Somebody stood out as being a bit of a change in vibe. I think there are times in my life I would have enjoyed the excitement in this more, and I can defo hear its influence on some bands I liked in my youth (elements of Primal Scream in particular) but tbh it feels like fairly pointless messy swagger. There's better Stooges available too.
I liked this! Wild, fun drumming and rhythms. Manifesto-like vibes at times. Playfully insistent. A strong start for The Fall that seems to lay out their ways and intentions. I'm into it.
Interesting! Glad to have encountered it and to have heard something new. I'm not so into the metal/punk slap bass, jangly guitars and swift changes thing, it just doesn't do it for me, although it was interesting to hear in this more punk rock context that felt like it bridged something in that direction in Beefheart and the way it develops later.
The tracks that were doing other stuff (sudden surf rock! Ooh, oddly sincere accoustic moment) I really rather liked, and there's an open playfulness in the lyrics and approach that's fun! Even within all the irony.
Overall though, too long imo and lots that I just wasn't that into.
Yes! I like this a lot. Album tracks and all. The singles are stand out bangers I have heard and played a million times, and not tired of. It feels accomplished for a first album. I feel I would listen to the album as a whole again and will probably come back to some of the album tracks in their own right. I've Got An Angel, Jennifer, This City Never Sleeps.
This is bold and bright. Strong, emotional pop. Sad and ecstatic. Great vocals. Some cool instrumentation (although also a few moments where it's a bit sleasy/much). More of an album album than I anticipated.
Possibly my favourite album by possibly my favourite band. It was always going to be a 5 from me!
What a treat to listen to it all again in all it's glorious silliness and deep feeling and fairground music hall and wild innovation. I love it so much.
The playful, perfect instrumentation. Sublime and ridiculous. The way the tracks play off each other and make something much bigger than even these dear songs in some kind of wild emergent process. Joy and dramatic despair and freedom and expansiveness opening up. What a gift to folks who going through (and who have been through) big conscious changes in wide-eyed, already world weary, messy ways. The sound of shedding your skin, shaking and shuddering through the changes.
Some beauty here. Some tragic in love with/shocked by the story he's a part of that I found kind of annoying as I encountered it yesterday, but is also an amazing situator into the moment it was created I guess. Weird echos and shadows that feel seen in it. I was a bit reactive to this yesterday, but it's still a bit on the trite side for me.
Yeah. Good for a worn out train trip home. Probs more like a 3.6 but that gets it a 4.
Not my favourite Beatles album, but this is beautiful. All My Lovin, You Really Got a Hold On Me and Money are highlights. Beautiful harmonies, expressions of caught up yearning and devotion. Some tracks hit it less for sure, but yeah, overall a banger.
What a timeless banger of an album. It has really grown with me over the years in different phases of life, and expresses so beautifully a lot of what life is, layers and different parts of experience. It's worth listening to many times over time. Accomplished, beautiful, far-ranging music. Real, expansive, devotional. Brilliant record.
Lush and lovely, expansive, playful, innovative hip-hop. Great to revisit this band and hear the whole album. Cheered me up on a bit of an urgh work day, but really this should be for lounging about in a park on a hot, bright day feeling free I think. I found it a bit long, but I don't think I would in that context. Eye Know is such an amazing tune.
Quite dire. The level of careless abuse and misogyny in the lyrics is something else. Some of these songs I used to bop along to and not think too hard about the lyrics. Cor! That seems messed up now. Some of the music is OK, but only OK really. If Paint It Black was on the version we were looking at that would have raised it a point. That's a banger. But my god.
There are elements of this I like. It's fun in places, and teenagers need something to let it out with. But it just feels a bit empty to me, and did even when I was young, when it came out. I enjoyed the rhythm section this time. I didn't finish it but that's more to do with how impossibly busy I was yesterday. It's more of a 2.5.
A bit dreary and bland mostly. Mix feels off. Quite liked the first track and a few others. Interesting to hear their biggest album all thr way through, as I never have. They've never really landed for me and this didn't change that. I won't be repeating the experience.
Beautiful. Two sides doing different things. Miles Davis' playing is unreal in its gorgeousness as ever. I love the antsyness in the drums and swirly intense Hammond on Shhh / Peaceful. Miles weaving through it and then leaving and returning. In a Silent Way is so beautiful, gentle and then not. Surprising and steady and full of gorgeous melody. I hadn't heard this one before and I can tell I will return to it again and again.
Liking the melodrama vibes, esp when it's expressed in vaudeville piano. There's a playfulness and shifting in it that I enjoy. Mostly less into the lyrics with pictures of period American life etc... yeah ok... Nice discovery overall. Liked the first half more than the second.
Quite refreshing in the context of this exercise, but nothing that really grabs me massively here. I remember the hits being very present around the late 90s/early 2000s and finding (Hey You) What's That Sound kind of annoying... they never grabbed me hugely at that time, and while it was mostly fairly enjoyable I can still see why.
It's quite that it mixes things about contemporary sound and production with classic stuff and some nice instrumentation and so on... lots to like on paper but it just doesn't quite imo. A drearyness that keeps coming in waves and weighing me down in amongst it all.
I do like parts of this. Other's less so. Lots of Sgt Peppers copying, but if you're going to it might as well be then I guess. Glad to have heard it. Doubt I will again. Feels like a 3.45.
Drifty. Intense. Easy to zone out to. Lush in places. Sneering and indie in places. Life is so much cinematic comedown music.
I don't quite know why it doesn't agree eith me, but it doesn't. I'm sure it's fine if you like that sort of thing.
Some moments where this is almost good. Some where it isn’t close. It's actually put me off the hits, if anything...
Fab album and a nice change. Not my very favourite thing, and defo in the 'somewhere between 3 and 4 lands', but I think over halfway.
Good but not amazing. Not my fav period of New Order, but interesting to hear!
A beautifully constructed album and a sweet, playful expression of one's mind opening up and (although I wasn't there) of the Boomer generations' experience of that as youngsters in that moment specifically. Complete with some of the awks that brings. Still, every time it gets towards a bit too trite the pace becomes playful and daft again. Every time it seems like it might be overly silly and absurd it dives deep into some sincere expression. Accomplished, silly, wide open expanses. Hope, yearning, learning and the circus. I'd like to tu-r-r-r-n y-ou-u-u-u o-o-o-n-n-nn....
Sleasy af and lacking depth but a decently structured album with a fair few bangers. Although I feel the Rolling Stones have aged very poorly, they have it down by this point. The wrongun in me kinda likes it.
I just never got the appeal of Amy Winehouse. I don't enjoy her voice, although I can hear its skill I guess. I find the music icky and the circus that surrounded her (and still does in a different way) even worse.
Cool. Rough 90s NYC. A lot to vibe with here and a lot that I don't as well.
Ah they are wonderful. I really enjoyed this, including the tracks I didn't know.
Lush and swishy dreamboat. Loses it a bit towards the end with the flimsy Beatles cover, but I really enjoyed it.
Kind of stupid but I loved returning to it. I find it does what it sets out to do very well. Nostalgic yearning built into the musical structures. Some fun instrumentation. I didn't get bored.
Something just doesn't quite float my boat here, and I was hoping that it would, returning to her. Curious to see if other albums of hers feel the same.
Had never heard of this. Quite enjoyed it for what it was.
Love this music and the threads it wove in the world.
Shit day on the grind? Crack open a cold one with the beard boys. Legggggggs.
There's a few powerful (and well known) tracks here, but it really feels like this is mostly John working out his pain over his trauma growing up and the (very) recent breakup of the Beatles and everything he was going through at that time. I've never listened to it as an album before and don't know if I will again, it's not really an enjoyable listen and a lot of it feels somewhat half-baked, parts more like a letter to his fans set to music, parts like him fucking around, exploring letting out sadness and anger. But as someone who loves that band and a lot of John's solo stuff too I'm glad I've heard it. Needs more Yoko.
I was going to give this a 2 but it really picked up for me in the last third. Got a lot more interesting. I think musically it's varied and good, but Tommy Hawk's mawking is not for me... at least not for a whole album.
I like some of the slide guitar and brass, some or the baselines. Quite bored though tbh.
Lots good. But also defo struck by how much better the original versions of Tutti Fruti and I Got a Woman are, my goodness. He is the king tho and I love him nonetheless.
Kinda beautiful but very miserable. Yeah.
There is some interesting stuff here and I feel for them. It just really doesn't do it for me.
I love them. This isn't them at their best but some cool base and great soulful pop vibes.
I like it. Almost a 4. May well revisit.
Ahh marvellous stuff. Worth it for the hits alone and the album tracks are also all pretty lush. Well structured too imo. Amazing bass of course. Carefree and fancy free. Funny. Right in the spirit. Almost a five.
This was a good revisit. It's not quite for me as it once was, and in a way it never quite was, but it's very beautiful, expressive and perfect. Big big sounds. Drums like thunder. Deep emotions. Flouncing.
Beautiful, yearning, expansive and a bit spooky. Loved this in my late teens and have always enjoyed revisiting it when I do.
Ah... Heroes the song is beautiful and I like the run from V2-Schneider to Neuköln in a totally different way, but otherwise it just feels overrated to me. A shame this is on here and not Lodger imo, which may not have a big hit but is a better album overall.
If Let Down wasn't surrounded by the rest it might be a bit irresistible. And some of the parts of the whole thing without Thom Yorke are quite good, technically kinda brilliant in places (not the computer voice either). But I can't deal with the level of misery and whine on this album. And it has Karma Police and Paranoid Android *and* No Surprises on it so.. while it's impressive how many songs on this are still played endlessly and so on... No... Basically. Not for me.
Goth. I have played Spellbound to death and there were one or two tracks I was less into, but I still think a low 4. There were some new to me tracks that really got me. It does what it sets out to very well. Atmosphere.
Big sound. Deep feels. Bells and drums like thunder. Lost and yearning and cynical and full of unstoppable religion. This holds up all this time on, and I'm glad I'm not that kid grasping and grappling for meaning that I was when I first heard this.
Poptastic, creepy, oof, oooh!
Ah, there were many years where this would have been an absolute 5 from me. I have a lot of love for this album, and it does what it sets out to do very well. Playful use of sounds, samples, religiousity in the service of its moment.
Ahh... bitter sweet and weird. Off the Wall and Don't Stop Till You Get Enough are still two of the best songs ever written imo. Rock with You right up there too, and every track holds its own. I feel weird about giving it a five, but I really don't know what else I could do.
So much everything. Exciting and angsty and lovely damn basslines...
Another low 4 from me. I didn't grow up hearing this sort of stuff and only encountered Marty Robbins a few years ago. So nostalgic even so. Utterly heart grabbing, lush and also awful. Great voice and melodies.
Late teenage memories ahoy. Some beauty here. Love her voice. Everything is Everything too, what a tune.
Enjoyed revisiting this. Haven't heard it since I was a kid (although obviously some tracks get carted out here and there and Whole Lotta Love has been (over)played to infinity - still a banger). Some aspects feel pretty sublime. Some tremendous baselines. The heaviness with the lushness. I find the hark back/appropriative blues vibes a bit eugh and the gender outlook very bleugh. As a kid I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings references, and why not I guess, but it feels a bit jembley now. Actually Led Zep are defo in the mix for very early proto jemble vibes! I also didn't realise this was (just) released in the 60s, which actually makes a lot of sense, it sounds out of 69..
and also definitely puts them at the forefront of some rock'n'roll developments as far as it goes.
I know it's good, and she has an amazing voice, but it never quite does it for me.
Fun shimmer pop stylings. I'd like to revisit this and particularly listen to the French version. I did right off the bat with the first couple of songs and they sounded even better I think.
Glad I finally heard this after all these decades... does exactly what it does very well.
Defo a few 0.1 points added here for 90s teen nostalgia, although they were one of some of my friends' favs rather than mine.
Mostly enjoyed it musically. Bright, grinding, sleezy rock'n'roll. Half a point up for having The Passenger and Lust for Life on it, but a full point down for all the 'young girl' creepiness.
