Oct 14 2025
Boston
Boston
Boston actually accomplishes that classic rock sound from the 70's/80's that makes a lot of those bands sound monotone, but adds variance into their music, continuously twisting the sound. Most of the songs still suffer from being 5+ minutes long with repeating refrains that play better at a concert than listening in the background. More than a Feeling and Peace of Mind will always be classics though.
3
Oct 15 2025
Garbage
Garbage
I've never even heard of the band Garbage before, and now I desperately want this on vinyl for background music. I'm not sure how I missed them, but I can immediately hear their influence throughout so many alternative rock and grunge bands I'm into. They had a sound similar to Smashing Pumpkins but shifted more towards Nirvana's grunge, but with a female vocalist who fucking crushed it. The songs didn't seem like lyrical genius to me at all (except for Stupid Girl, which was ironically one of my least favorite songs). Queer was my overall favorite despite my love of Vow. I highly recommend listening to the opening of Vow with headphones, the sound balancing is awesome, but then they add a tinnitus sounding effect that hurts the headphone experience.
5
Oct 16 2025
Hunky Dory
David Bowie
This album was not my jam. The lyrics continuously were creative, powerful, and captivated my attention. But the singing + instruments just sounded discordant to me frequently. The slower songs tended to be the ones I enjoyed the most which was more like listening to David Bowie recite poetry with a guitar.
Highlight: Life on Mars. I wasn't a big fan of sound, but the lyrics were a superb story process:
"Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy.
Oh man!".
2
Oct 17 2025
Tommy
The Who
oodness that was a dark experience. This might be only album where I actively hate every song but one, and I still want to give it 5/5 stars. This is not a musical album, this is dark musical theater you can listen to instead of watch. I was ready to write this album off as a 1/5 stars, this music sucks, about 7 songs in. But I started getting invested by "Christmas" immediately followed by "Cousin Kevin". Towards the latter part of the album, I couldn't focus on the other stuff I was doing, I was just sitting there listening to this musical. I'm still not convinced a good way to write a musical is via a feature length album, but I have to give it to The Who for how innovative that is in 1969.
Each song by itself was awful though with the sole exception of Pinball Wizard (which has a much darker twist to it now that I've heard its full album). However, I really don't think The Who cared about making the music all that good. I'm hard pressed to believe there's a single person on the planet that thinks "Fiddle About" is a good song for its music as opposed to its importance to the albums story. The numerous 20-30 second songs spread throughout the album seem to cleanly separate the "acts" of this "show", and summarize the next steps in the story for people not paying close attention, a really nice touch (even though the songs suck).
4