D.A.N.C.E has a really fun vocal - I haven't heard anything quite like it. I wondered if it was too chirpy for me! But it's good!
There's lots of energy and I appreaciated it but it didn't often get me dancing, unfortunately! I'd have it on in the shower or doing energetic work! I was looking for an emotional centre; what it was about. E.g. Daft Punk I feel have that. "Valentine" moved me. I was dancing to Newjack.
Phantom I & II felt similar to me and I prefered II.
I prefer when Cross gets angry, abrasive and choppy rather than trying to convince that it's cool and in the club. I like tracks like "Stress", most. I love the mediaeval (zither? dulcimer?) bit! I wouldn't neccessarily put "The Party" on *at* a party, and that's probably a problem for me. Most people are more interesting when they're not in party mode to be honest, and this feels like a similar situation. Waters of Nazareth is great. The fuzzy fuzz really gets in the ears! I like it! I joked that It's sounds like if you slightly annoyed Daft Punk and they needed to vent about you afterwards. I think if I was picking tracks in a rush I'd take the later half of the album, Newjack, Valentine, Stress and Nazareth. I think D.A.N.C.E. would be too much after a while and "The Party"/DVNO was where it slightly annoyed me. DVNO is really smarmy and the vocal has the effect of centering a very annoying character. I had fun with this, it fed my ears with new sounds. I wanted to follow it's experimental punk side more than I got. "Genesis" is an electronic Godzilla, espeicially since hearing in a live recording, it gets people going, it's very good. It's not making me dance or cheer, though! I can understand how it could, and is meant to be a monster track. A shade not pushing though as a high energy dance track to me personally!
"Let There Be Light" and its wobbles are settling in nicely!
I don't know my future after this weekend. Björk is lovely. I think this is going to be me processing stray thoughts. " Can I get a "Meet Björk at McDonald's" haircut?" Meeting "Björk" on an island, as in the lyric of "There's More To Life Than This", is inviting, but what she shares in the world is an energy we can all locate, that we yearn for when we want to run away; typically we don't. We all want Big Time Sensuality. Now this is difficult, because I got curious about the instrumentation of "Human Behaviour" and "Crying" and wondered if there were instrumental versions, because they are great dance/electronic pieces. This was released in 1993. Björk knows all this, but I'd want to suggest that I wondered if she needs to say her character's "In the City" when the machinations of train-like rhythms are communicating that. It's a bit of "show, don't tell" advice, but anyway. When I hear Middle Eastern instruments, I want them to open up and breathe more. Sometimes it seems vocals are sitting atop instrumentation a bit and not getting mucked in apiece with it. "Anchor Song" is very apiece.
In this album, there is sensuality. There is texture, a point of view, a voice, and a relation to music that you won't get anywhere else, that can't be recreated, that you just won't find elsewhere. It's nice to revisit 90s dance too. It doesn't have to be angry with you, doesn't think you're a capitalist pig for slop-feed, doesn't need to be ironic (well, "There's More To Life Than This" is, but that is sincere in 2025, where our ironic now is something telling you you're an idiot for its full duration), so 90s dance is really cosy and trustworthy and isn't a rug-pull underneath you.
I'm trying hard to fit into your scheme of things. I like when this record is funky. I always skipped "Word on a Wing" on compilations. I know, I'm worried now because I've read comments of countless people who LOVE it to their core. I still can't yet key into what the song's getting at. It has never succeeded in speaking to me. One of the best album openers in "Station to Station". I like a piano that sometimes sounds like a London pub piano. This album is how I imagine total creative fulfillment and harmony in a studio, just dream-like. This being so coke-fuelled, which to be fair is more wholesome than the cola, probably means it wasn't, but so much is clicking together. In the mid-1970s Bowie's creative and mental health life was affected by "astronomical" (his quote, wikipedia) use of hard drugs, and apparently his Thin White Duke character was retired when he got on a cleaner path more positive for him. My thoughts, then - this fact had me thinking that this is the artist's darkest album, and the question how much should we indulge artists in self-destructive phases or welcome a world of less "Stations to Stations" but healthier, happier people? I love "Wild is the Wind", wings are presumably involved somewhere but I find that more inviting listening.
There's love and love songs on this tender album, but it's a dark tunnel between then and the future, affected by hedonism, emotionally out of control. What's interesting is how a lot of it is a funk record, and funk can be and often is joyful and Station to Station isn't wholly joyful, isn't wholesome. In fact it's movement in a modern-sounding crisis between one thing and another, like its a funk experience of a depressing traffic jam, it has movement in it but you want out. Five stars would be boring. I prefer warmth these days, and warmth with my funk. I might not immediately go to this great, unmatched album as a choice.
I'm in the Midlands of England, I don't drive so I could never experience a highway. This album is fascinating to me. There's a lot of meaning and dialect I'm probably missing. This is probably pretty close to the ultimate blues record. I was listening to this in the park, it's Autumn, and this is vibing well with Autumn. The vocal knows where his wheelhouse is and it's so powerful, he rocks out in his groovy power every track, which is great. I look for variance though, when I've already been impressed. I don't get this Blues sad when I get sad, I get sad girl sad. I really itch to hear a Blues compilation firstly. I don't think I like the cover!
"Chooglin'" is a term popularized by John Fogerty in his Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Keep On Chooglin'," and it generally means to have a good time, to keep going with energy, or to move with a strong, steady rhythm. The meaning of "chooglin'" can be interpreted as a positive affirmation to persevere through hard times and continue to enjoy life." That's very heartwarming, lovely. "You got to ball and have a good time, and that's what I call chooglin'." Keep on chooglin'! I was done by the end of this, it choogles, all the performances are excellent, and there's nothing to knock, its all powerhouse. It's all great and its all a powerhouse, which of course is brilliant. My mind interprets it as a lack of variety and range. I can't help that when "Bootleg (Alternative Take)" begun on the streaming version, my mind held quite a heavy sigh for hearing it again. The score will just weigh in a "not quite for me" factor. If it were live I'd be going crazy in the loveliest sense.
"Pull the string! Pull the string! A mistake is made. A story must be told.
Beware...beware! Beware of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep. He eats little boys...puppy dog tails, and big, fat snails. Beware, take care....beware!" - Bella Lugosi, "Glen or Glenda"
The musicianship is so great. A powerful voice. This isn't "my genre". I've been trying to consider that as not of consequence for this challenge, but it is. Listen, I've been genuinely depressed in my life, still am, I know about mental health; I've been subject to a few of the faults of our power structures set up out there. I'm anti-war. I don't really need someone shouting about how much death and darkness and bloodshed there is, and saying nothing more. I wrote poems like this at school, and didn't write them when I experienced real life, and I got better at poetry. War poems by people who, like me, haven't been there, read a certain way. I guess a real experience might - might - include the stunned silence of trauma. The album correctly says, we're all servants to the powers that be, but it doesn't really identify what that is, how you might be part of it yourself when you're suing a child and family for downloading a song, say. Leonard Cohen is more Metal. Anyone who sits, names their darkness, instead of projecting it onto nameless entities supposedly creating our doom, is stronger to me, even when entities exist. They exist, but "us and a nameless them" isn't the totality.
Hey, sometimes in the right contexts, I like one who bows to a Messiah, the act, the idea. Bowing to your power can be pretty cool - can be. I really like the guitars. I like it when there isn't a vocal as self-satisfied as a teenager saying "dark-sounding" words. On "Orion", it opens up, just rocking out, and you can think for yourself. Instrumental Metal might be more my thing until a band can speak to me about experience. I like Damage Inc. and I like a lot on this album. It's prompting me to look further into Metal, but I'm finding the whole Metallica package quite annoying.
Ah, the boys of the best damn pet shop in town. The fact is you can pin electronic music down to the technology that ages it. That can shine through nostalgically and you can celebrate it. On the other hand, one can be a little too aware of the distance created by its aging qualities, if your ears are now tuned to contemporary production. "One More Chance" does nothing for me as a opener. I'm not sure why it seems to have the soundfont as used for a baddie in "Banjo Kazooie" throughout. "Rent" is a bit silly and "Hit Music" sounds like someone unsuccesfully scrambling for a song idea, on a day that hasn't been full of inspiration. Is this Rent/Hit Music middle section just a bit sh*? "It Couldn't Happen Here" is a lovely composition, a lovely silent moment, a kitchen-sink melodrama. But - thanks be - that we're onto "It's A Sin", a song that I'd actively pick to listen to, with experience, heartbreak, force, aching, astute critique. Fuck Thatcher, always. And all the enemies of Love. An anthem in all the right ways. "Shopping" is up there with all the best protest songs. "I Wanted To Wake Up" is so entirely crafted as a pop song of the time, it's now difficult. It's a close neighbour down the road from 80's aerobics class music. I found "Heart" and "King's Cross" a bit boring. There is a little disconnect to take note of in terms of a limit to how much it's speaking to me right now , but it's angry and has some great songs. I'm not hearing an album that's cohesive and for my ear. However, I have so much respect for what the boys of the shop do, how this takes aim at 80s limited beliefs in trickle down b*all*cks, excess, cronyism, emerging capitalist/fascism we're still stuck with, and how Britain was bought and sold by Thatcher. I'd say we're still recovering but once everyone and everything was sold down the river, it was gone. The Boys pushing through LGBTQ+ stories and representation under Thatcher's laws, under the some of the worst conditions the community has faced here. It has to be a strong three from me, today, but it's with love, Boys
I like this, a sound placed very much in time, but that is fascinating to visit, because pastiches that have perhaps popped up since just don't recapture the same world and ideas and perspectives as they were. The songs can be a little formless. You don't necessarily get the structure of a rock song. The percussion becomes transcendent at one point and I felt it to take on a spiritual aspect. I had it on, doing mostly active listening but it was in in the background, and the incredible sound just gave those moments in the day an otherworldly quality. If you do look for song structure and the spell doesn't work on you, I can imagine that being a problem. It was a really easy listen at a time when I needed one from this challenge. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is more highly sensual than I thought! The full length version I was listening to goes through amazing phases. Transformative listening.
This is amazing. Recommended if you're human. You can hear the catharsis in the room, the communal release, what Cash's being there means, the quips, the mistakes played off with jokes, the place the time, how the event was managed. I think you could genuinely say that there's no record like it. Much of Country has put the music back in its truck in the showroom or with the wheels taken off, that doesn't move anywhere meaningful or say anything. Cash stood for living folk song, and Faith and music in the darkest places. Its the ultimate demonstration of walking the walk not just talking the hokey talk. Essential, a record full, of life, hardship, joy. One of the best gigs of all time.
Classic, flawless. Aretha takes no sh*t and tells she expects no bs. A timeless soul record, full of emotion and honesty.
Sweet, perfect harmonies. I don't feel that I'm best placed to "judge" it or that that would be a good idea, but it is sweet. Some themes are love themes. This wraps around and is friendly music to flow into the ears. Slightly ASMR before that name came about! The voice compositions are so skillful and perfect.
