I read a review that John Lennon albums leave an impression, but probably more on him than on us. It sounds like he’s working out a lot of family and Beatles issues (as a result of his unfinished primal scream therapy) but for me a lot of rockier songs sound like the type of classic rock that’s a bit boring to me. Some of the slower songs I like, like Working Class Hero and Love. I also like Isolation, how it mostly sounds like a Randy Newman song but the middle is filled with shouts of anger and desperation.
Apparently you can tell this album cover apart from Yoko Ono’s album of the same name because he’s leaning on her in this one but she’s leaning on him on her album cover.
A really mind blowing opener (Baba O’Reilly) and closer (Won’t Get Fooled Again) and lots of other great songs in between. I love the synth organ sound mixed with the guitars. Now that I that this was from a failed rock opera (Lifehouse) I can’t help hearing how stage-musical some of these songs sound (even though they’re great). I enjoyed listening to it, but it didn’t really move me in any significant way.
In general I like downtempo electronica, but I found this album quite boring. Maybe it’s over-familiarity with the songs, but I think the fact they were all used in advertising probably says a lot about the bland universality of them. I thought the Pitchfork review was funny - describing this album as fun, functional and disposable - like a condom.
I didn’t realise until reading the Wikipedia page that Moby’s name comes from the fact that he’s a descendent of Herman Melville.
Parklife is technically excellent - great musicianship, cool genre-hopping - but it never quite clicked for me - back when it was released and it still doesn’t today. To me, Blur sometimes sound like they’re sneering at their subjects rather than being part of their world. That said, when they drop the smirk on slower tracks like “To the End” and “This Is a Low,” they’re genuinely moving. Strong 3 stars.
Not for me. I can appreciate her great voice of course, but she doesn’t appeal to me as much as other jazz singers like Nina Simone or Ella Fitzgerald. Vaughan really uses her voice like a jazz improv instrument, and I wonder if that removes some of the human emotion from it for me. She seemed like a really cool person though.
This could be a five star album for me on further listens. Bowie’s voice is ominous and otherworldly, and the freestyle avant-garde jazz is disconcerting. And the context that Bowie started writing this when he was diagnosed with cancer, and only lived a few days past its release, adds another level to baleful atmosphere - reminding me of Mozart’s Requiem and the fact Mozart believed he was writing it for his own death. I think the AllMusic review says it best: “it is music for the dead of night but not moments of desolation; it's created for the moment when reflection can't be avoided”.
I love her voice and the dreamy, spacey production, but overall not for me. I was into some of the songs but stretched out over the entire album I found the sound didn’t keep my interest.
I like the wall of sound, with songs inspired by (or copied from) T. Rex, Stone Roses, the Stones, etc. But I’d much prefer to listen to their influences than originals. Liam has a great voice, and some of the songs are a little catchy (if you ignore Noel’s lyrics), but I don’t really understand how this album made Oasis-mania take hold.
I liked the vibe and the music was great (the drums and especially, for me, Albarn’s piano and organ sound), but it sounded a bit samey over the entire album.
I’d like to listen to this more to see if it grows on me, but didn’t have the chance. I’m not sure rap is for me - the ability to write lyrics like that impresses me but I find the beats pretty boring and the subject matter isn’t for me.
Joan Baez once said, after hearing Dylan sing, “I couldn’t believe something so powerful could come out of that toad”. Not that my opinion counts for much in the light of all the praise that Dylan gets, but I feel the same way. There are some amazing tracks here (Rainy Day Woman, Visions of Johanna, Stuck Inside A Mobile, You Go Your Way) but there’s a bitterness, self-centredness, and dated misogyny to his lyrics that make it hard for me to listen to.
Really liked the psychedelic vibe of the sitar and loved the Moog. Probably not an album I’d listen to too much (and I find the Jumping Jack Flash cover a bit kitsch), but enjoyed listening to it.
I like the themes and the rawness of the albums, but it’s a bit shouty for me. Again, I think if I listened to it more, and if I was in the right headspace, I could rate this higher. Probably 3.5 stars from me.
There’s understandably some filler on this album but the highs are very high. I love the catchy pop, the creativity and breadth, the ironic humour, and the sheer audacity.
This is another album that I don’t mind listening to, but I would probably pick other albums to listen to instead. I enjoyed the blues rock guitars and the growling vocals. I also like that they have an image and the fact that Billy Gibbon plays with a peso. Maybe 3.5 stars.
Love the distorted mic and guitar, makes them sound like The MC5 or The Animals. Also love that this was probably an album about divorce when reviews for the albums were still calling them siblings. Listened to this a few times throughout the day and was looking forward to re-listening every time.
The discordant guitars at the start kind of decided for me that this wasn’t going to be an album I’d enjoy. But why do I like the Smiths and dislike this? Not sure - maybe it’s the absence of Johnny Marr that allows Morrissey to really embrace the mope. Some of the more melodic tracks I liked. I think the Smiths captures this ennui of young adulthood for me, but by this album Morrissey is just being a moaner and contrarian.
A bit too polished, bland, commercial, and some of the songs seem to just blend into each other. They also go on too long, and some of the synth and brass sounds dated. But there are definitely some catchy songs (“Money For Nothing” my favourite with Sting singing about MTV in the background) and Knopfler’s voice has a nice Dylan quality to it.
I don’t think I’d ever listened to a Grateful Dead record before, and it surprised me how soft and country their tracks were. I found this album just ok, maybe 2.5 stars. The musicianship I’m sure is very good, but none of the songs grabbed me and they all seemed to blend into each other.
Great, dark, but hopeful tracks. You can really still hear Bowie’s influence even though Iggy was trying to make his own mark. Passenger and Lust for Life are the highlights for me, and loved the mood in general, but the whole thing didn’t quite come together. Probably a 3.5.
Probably a 3.5. Has the sound of what I’d consider the 80s on an album from the 70s - synth and echoing vocals. There’s probably too much experimentation which results in an uneven album (some songs sound like parodies of Alice Cooper or Randy Newman) but Solsbury Hill and Here Comes The Flood are five-star tracks.
Great album. Not my favourite Smiths album but still great. I sometimes find Morrissey’s lyrics unsettling and he’s definitely a moaner, but Marr’s music is good (although I still like the older jingle-jangle guitar sound). Girlfriend in a Coma and Death of a Disco are obvious favourites, but I like Paint a Vulgar Picture too.
Musically experimental glam rock and a proto-Bowie sound. Started a bit better than it finished for me (Needles in the Camels Eye and Baby’s on Fire are highlights for me, not that the other songs are too far behind). I find it a pity that the lyrics are such nonsense and free-associative, although they do have a sense of humour which I appreciate.
Noisy post-punk. I liked Catholic Block but would like to give this more of a listen and I’m looking forward to going back to it again.
Starts real strong with the bluesy swamp rock number Born on the Bayou (full of Southern references but band were born and raised in California). Proud Mary is another good track (although slightly slower and less rocky than I remember it). Overall the rest of the tracks don’t live up to those tracks - the drums feel a bit plodding and there isn’t the same intensity in the guitar and vocals.
This album sounds like punked-up, glammy Stones-rock. I love their energy, their anarchism, and their individuality. I also love the context of the band - a bunch of heroic-addicted, sexually ambiguous young men causing people to walk out of their gigs - the fact the they were voted both best and worst band in the Creem reader poll - a teenage Morrissey being enraptured with them on the Old Grey Whistle Test - Bowie at their gigs taking notes. The story of Johansen falling asleep at the record company meeting and waking up when Todd Rundgren’s name was mentioned and him reluctantly taking the gig. The chaos of the recording and mixing sessions. The supposedly bad musicianship (but I guess it doesn’t sound so bad when you know what punk is) and, as Pitchfork said, “as if the lyrics in Grease had been re-written by Bukowski”. I love the whole package.
I quite like The Hives music, but I find it very hard to love. I’m not a fan of the early-2000s garage-rock revival generally, and the fact that they misunderstood the dictionary definition of “hives” and thought they were naming themselves after a highly infectious and lethal disease hints at their inauthenticity. All their commercialism and fame-seeking is a turn off to me. Some of the songs on this compilation are just slightly heavier versions of all that generic garage-rock that was around at the time, but some of the songs from their first album that appear on this compilation (Untutored Youth, A.K.A I.D.I.O.T) sound like 90s so-cal punk bands like Offspring. Apparently their live shows are great, but I saw them at Witnness in 2002 and don’t remember being blown away.
To my untrained ear they sound like a cross between Oasis and a sort of beige Stone Roses. That’s almost definitely selling them short - not just because of their commercial success and critical acclaim but because they do sound like they’re trying to make their own unique sound. It’s hard to listen to these tracks with fresh ears due to the amount of airplay they’ve gotten over the years, but even the hits do nothing for me. Wikipedia said people likened Ashcroft to early-80s Bono and I agree, but like Bono he sounds like he heads off on a deeply emotional journey leaving me behind. I like the (over) earnestness of Ashcroft’s lyrics and the fact that the seemed to care about making a good record, but this is probably a 2.5 stars from me.
I guess they’re my favourite band named after a gym teacher. It’s real good guitar and Ronnie Van Sant’s amazing vocals soaring over them. I love Simple Man and of course Free Bird. Won’t be reaching for this often but it was a pleasure to listen to. Probably a 3.5.
I guess like Billy Bragg from the same era, I admire more than enjoy their anger at the world. You can hear the bands they inspired for the rest of the 80s with their guitar pop sound, but I found Paul Weller’s bitterness and echo vocals to grate a little over the entire album. Would still listen to it again though, probably 3.5.
Of all the bands considered Brit-pop, Suede are probably my favourite. I was already familiar with this album and I love the glam, haunted sound of Brett Andersons vocals and the beautiful distorted guitars. While other Brit-pop bands were a mix of the Beetles and The Stone Roses, Suede feels more like a mix of Bowie and The Smiths.
I think it says a lot about the quality of song writing and the emotion in the performances that I can hear these familiar hits and I’m still not sick of them. Sure, there are still some Eurovision-quality songs in here (“Wish is was Dum Dum Diddle, your darling fiddle”) and there are few filer songs I think, but overall a record I’d be happy to stick on again.
The radio-friendly almost R&B commercial tracks like Juicy don’t appeal to me much, but I really like the storytelling and humour on the other tracks. There’s some grit or funk to this album that catches me more than other rap albums. Really enjoyed it overall.
I do like that blue-eyes soul sound, even if the only track I know from this album is Son of a Preacher Man. There is something lazy, loungy, longing about the songs. It was interesting to read about the temper tantrums she had during the recording, and I didn’t realise she was English, or Irish descent (Mary O’Brien!). For me lots of the tracks feel a little flat, but I’d love to have it on in the background during dinner.
I’m just not a jazz fusion guy. The album opens with some lovely synth and bass on Birdland, sounding like pleasant theme music to a 70s morning show, but then loses it half way through. There are some nice driving beats on the tracks, and I particularly enjoyed Rumba Mama. I’m obviously the one at fault here, but I don’t understand how musicians at the top of their game can make a sax-synth duet on Palladium sound like a duck quacking along to some elevator Muzak. Not for me - it sounds like the stuff Howard Moon listens to in The Mighty Boosh - but I’m glad there are musical tastes in this world besides mine.
It feels like you’re listening to David Byrne’s inner monologue on this album, in all its anxious glory. The drums and bass are a nervous heartbeat in sync with the agitated vocals, so when you hear the steel drums or marimba on some tracks it’s a jolt. I don’t warm to this album on initially, but by the time Psycho Killer game on I couldn’t help dancing a little. It’s funny to think Talking Heads were considered punk - performing at CBGBs and supporting the Ramones - there’s a lot more going on in their songs apart from rage and angst.
Great album - one of those where I started adding songs to my liked songs and then almost added every song. There are a few songs that don’t catch me, but overall it’s full of hits.
Really nice, chill bossa nova. Girl from Ipanema sets the tone and the whole album makes you feel like you’re winding down gently after a hot summer’s day.
Great album. Some good rock songs on it but my preference was for the slower songs. Still so much bitterness and a his naive sense of can’t we all just get along” while he lives in a mansion is still there, but I prefer this to his first solo album.
It has some really bongo-rific tracks, but I don’t know when I’d ever listen to this again. Not enough in there for me to sit down and listen to it, too energetic to have on in the background, too dated to throw on at a party. Most of its appeal to me is how recognisable its beats are after being sampled in hip-hop so often. Great musicianship, but it just sounds like the chase music for movies it was designed to be. Probably 2.5 stars.
I can’t really empathise with gangsta rap (I know Ice Cube called it “reality rap”, but the reality it glorified was the violence and misogyny of life, never the may other parts of reality) however, the energy and the healthy disrespect of authority are something I would have loved more when I was a teenager. The album started stronger with the first three songs (Straight Outta Compton, Fuck Tha Police, Gangsta Gangsta) but I felt a lot of the rest of the album was filler (with the exception of Express Yourself). Probably 2.5 stars.
I can’t help compare this to Joni Mitchell’s Blue, so I was surprised to hear they were being recorded simultaneously in the same studio. However, while Blue feels really heartfelt, for some reason this album doesn’t get me in the feels like everyone else. It’s nice, probably 3.5 stars, but I’m not in a rush to stick it on again.
I resisted listening to this album because I thought it would be it would be hard-to-listen-to experimental electronic music, and the first minute of the first track (The Robots) only confirmed my suspicions. But by the time we’d got to the instantly recognisable The Model I was in synth-heaven. You can hear the future influences in the music - Vangelis’s Balderunner in Metropolis, Gary Newman’s synth, the 80s techno-pop. Some of the tracks didn’t grab me (Spacelab felt like a retro-futuristic disco hit, and Neon Lights was a bit too simplistic), but overall I loved it.
For such an influential album - the album that brought blues to a suburban audience and across the Atlantic to the likes of the Rolling Stones - and for a live album of a reportedly legendary performance, for some reason I remained pretty much unmoved by this album. I don’t think I’m an electro-blues fan but I do love the energy of a live album, but this don’t sound like a live album until we got to I’ve Got My Mojo Working and you could hear the audience react. Until that point I hadn’t really reacted either. I guess not for me, but I’d happily listen to it again some time. 3 stars.
The opening track, White Light/White Heat, sounds like it’s had a few seconds trimmed off the start so you’re launched straight into a noise-rock hellscape. The level of distortion in the album reduces the quality enough that I initially thought this was a home recording made before their & Nico album. I love the rawness and weirdness and rebellion and defiance. And it’s awesome to end with Sister Ray, “the big bang of noise-rock”.
I feel all my friends had a copy of this in their car for a while in the early 2000s. Great album, loads of energy, funky slap-bass and edgy lyrics. Second half of the album tails off a little.
This album was fine, but it’s the sort of thing I’d have on in the background. I liked the violin on the first track, but the dissonance throughout isn’t my cup of tea.
I just love this slimy, sleazy, glammy rock sound. It’s tied up with memories of listening to T. Rex on cassette in my friend’s kitchen on our school lunch break, and so many of the tracks on here are favourites.
As a critic said about Newman’s sarcastic criticisms of society, it’s a dirty job but literally no one has to do it. Newman is like a tragic clown, he can’t help satirising the crowd even while they misunderstand him and throw stuff at him. His liberal armchair critiques probably don’t have any real effect on his true audience apart from make them feel better about themselves. His music is somewhere between dated piano bar songs, stage musical numbers, and catchy nursery rhymes. And yet I still love him. This album, with the explosive Rednecks opener, paints a vivid picture of the south and its characters, with bravado and sadness and everything in between.
When Gloria and Redondo Beach come on, I wonder why I don’t listen to this album more, but as the album goes on the spoken word begins to grate a little. I think this deserves a closer listen to me, then maybe it’d be a 5.
A friend burnt me a copy of this in the early 2000s because he thought I’d like it, and I wore out the CD. Some of the critical reviews I’ve seen were that they just ripped off the sound of other famous bands and don’t have a style of their own, but I love the 60s psychedelic sound mixed with sea shanties and ska. I love the eclecticism, and the saltwater soaked and threatening sound in the tracks is totally my jam.
I was only familiar with the title song on the album but I wish I’d discovered it sooner. I’m always in the mood for a bit of nostalgic melancholy. Although I wish one review didn’t point out that you could play “kids” bingo with this album - he does says “kids” a distracting amount of times! It does feel like it gets a bit samey towards the end and the run length could have been cut down. I’m looking forward to listening to it more.
One of my favourite albums. I read in a 33 1/3 book about the album being recorded during the Cuban missile crisis - the idea that all the people in the crowd were living under the imminent possibility of mutually assured destruction adds a mania to their cheers and screams. James Brown brings so much energy it leaves you breathless and the hits just run into one another. My only complaint is that it’s over in a shot.
Bluesy carnival music heard in a bar at 3am. I love the dark humour in the lyrics, and the tribal percussion under the swaggering guitar.
Nice funk with a slight electronic vibe. I like it, but wouldn’t have it on regular rotation. Probably a 3.5.
Could have done without the Phil Spector monologue at the end, but so many classic versions of Christmas songs on this one.
A defining album of my teenage years, there are few albums I’ve listened to more. It says a lot about the angsty teenage world the songs created that you could live them for hours at a time in your room. The heavy songs rock hard, the quiet songs allow time for introspection. For some reason I never considered myself a Pumpkins fan, and Billy Corgan’s lyrics are pretty embarrassingly angsty, so I don’t consider this a perfect album, but it’s probably a 4.5 for me.
Probably one of my Desert Island Discs, I just love getting lost in the twilight melancholy of Margo Timmins’ crooning. I didn’t realise that this was all recorded in one night (more or less) in Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity all huddled around a single microphone. The church itself is almost like another instrument on this album, its echos and resonances adding to the mood. I like Misguided Angel and Sweet Jane, but the highlights for me are Mining for Gold, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and especially Blue Moon Revisited.
Another of my Desert Island Discs I think. I’m not sure why I find noise rock so comforting - my five year old claims that it isn’t music, it’s just people warming up before they play music. Almost every track on the first half of the album is a favourite, and I still enjoy the second half.
I can hear the chamber pop sound that inspired a generation of indie artists years later, and you can hear the influence of Pet Sounds and maybe Sgt. Pepper’s, but overall the album doesn’t really hit me, especially in the first half. This Will Be Our Year and Time of the Season saves this album for me.
The band chose the perfect name for their relentless rock. They pack a lot of energy into 29 minutes, but basically only one emotion - “let’s party”. The poor recording (bad equipment or just engineers who didn’t know how to capture their loud sound?) is a bit hard to listen to and would put me off listening to this album frequently, but the fact that they were making punk 10 years too early means I’ll have to give this at least 2.5 stars.
Don’t think I’m a shoegaze fan. To me this sounded like someone had sucked all the life out of The Stone Roses. I must admit I didn’t give this as close a listen as I could - maybe listening to it with headphones on while out for a January walk would suit the mood better.
I think CSNY must have been more than the sum of their parts, because Stills on his own does do anything for me. Great guitar playing, and I loved the bluesy beat on Go Back Home, but I found most of the rest of the album lacking. Love The One You’re With is a good opener, but it raised my hopes for a better album.
Some good tracks (Pyramid Song, Knives Out), but overall a bit slow and samey. Probably a 3.75 all the same.
A voice I didn’t really warm to, and a sound that felt more country than folk or folk-rock. I liked Everbody’s Talking At Me, but I prefer Harry Nillsen’s cover. He seems like he influenced a lot of people, but I wouldn’t be rushing to hear this album again. A medium to strong 2.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why discordant noise with a rock backing makes me feel good - is it just that I can’t tune out of it and am forced to listen to the music? - but this is an awesome example of that genre. Strong 3.
I went back and listened to the other White Stripes album I’m familiar with, White Blood Cells, and this album does sound a little lacking compared to that. Doorbell was my standout favourite track, but I liked Little Ghost as a quirky little bluegrass song, and Take, Take, Take was a memorable little story about meeting Rita Hayworth. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to it, so I think it deserves a 4.
What’s not to love? Eno-produced, Bowie-remixed, post-punk with synth, all wrapped in a Dadaist sense of humour. Really angular David Byrne style to the vocals, and some of the guitar licks remind me of The Feelies.
Bouncy, light, melancholic chamber pop. This puts me in a nostalgic mood any time I listen to it. Not an album to listen to in a crowd, you need to be cosy and alone.
Weird funky honky-tonk, like Tim Buckley wanted to make a soundtrack to a blaxplotation movie. The music is great, I couldn’t help dancing while listening to it, but I don’t think his voice is rich enough for this style and the lyrics are very cringey. I’m happy he’s the sort of person to follow his muse and make music he wants to make. Probably a strong 2 from me.
Boogie blues rock with a driving beat. Apparently the album, with its synth and drum machines, saved the band from obscurity in the age of MTV (even though Gibson replaced most of Beard’s drums and Hill’s bass with their electronic equivalents). A pretty forgettable album for me outside of the historic context, but I couldn’t help dancing around the kitchen while it was on. A soft 3.
Gangsta rap does nothing for me - I find the beats too repetitive and I just find the braggadocious lyrics a bit ridiculous. The sense of humour and the rhymes are reasonably entertaining, and I like the samurai movie references and the samples. Definitely a really important album in the history of rap, but just not for me. A strong 2.
I like the earlier, noisier Sonic Youth stuff too but, while the heavy guitars and noise overdubs are here as well, this album is definitely more accessible and rockier. Their first album on a major label (Geffen), I wish I’d been listening to this on my CD player in my bedroom in the 90s.
I was only familiar with some of the singles from this album, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear the whole thing (even if it was loooong!). I definitely thought Bad Boi’s Speakerboxxx was the better half, but André 3000’s The Love Below had some good tracks on it (including Hey Ya! which is the best track in my opinion). Some of the interludes were weird comedy and a bit cringe, but overall you have to applaud their creativity, especially seeing as they never hit highs like this again.
This album wasn’t for me at all - the echoey vocals and the lyrics which are overwrought and pretentious. I liked the guitar on some tracks but could have done without the sax. I was hoping I’d like this album but mostly it annoyed me.
Hard to deny this is one of the best albums ever. Most of side 2 and all of side 1 are epic songs.
I love seeing people be their authentic, freaky selves. At the same time, I find spending too much time with them exhausting. It was the same with this album - what a complete orgy of creativity and anti-establishment feeling - but there’s only so long I can listen to people being funny about things that really aren’t that funny. Glad I listened to it, glad it exists, but won’t be rushing back to listen to it again.
Nope. If this was put on at a party I’d leave. Kind of Blue is one of my favourite albums but I just don’t enjoy listening to jazz-fusion. I saw the album was 75 mins long and after listening to it for a while I thought “at least I must be a good way through the album now!” It turned out I was only ten minutes in, and that’s only half way through the first track. Sanctuary was pretty ok, but overall not my thing.
Not as strong as his debut but a beautiful haunting album all the same. The openers - Bird on a Wire, and Story of Issac - are some of my favourites. Some of the other songs are pretty forgettable but I could happy listen to them again. The sparseness of the production only emphasises the poetry of the lyrics and Cohen’s haunting voice, as well as the few musical flourishes like the French chorus on The Partisan.
A concept album about an armadillo-tank hybrid named Tarkus that fights a manticore, ends up in a river only to emerge as Aquatarkus? Surely this will be pretentious and hard to listen to? Yes. Yes it is. All the same the title track grew on me as it played and a couple of tracks on the second side are decent (even if the rest are throwaway). I’d listen to this again.
Delightfully funky spaceship themed concept album from the Parliament-Funkadelic crew. Give Up The Funk is the standout, but there are a lot of other juicier funk numbers on this album, with solid bass lines and bright horns. Probably a very strong or just about a four.
A quiet, contemplative, womb-like album. The songs are nice but there’s not much to grab on to, although when Björk’s voice rises from the whisper it carries you away with it. Maybe you need to be in the right mood and the right place to listen to this album and give it justice.
I have happy memories of listening to this on sunny road trips the summer it came out. It’s a solid rap opera, focusing on the heartache and beauty and frustration in mundane, everyday life - no pop-song hyperbole here. There are some tracks that are just there to move the story forward, and there’s not many tracks I’d listen to in isolation (maybe just Fit But You Know It and Dry Your Eyes), but as an album it’s a work of art.
I’m mostly familiar with Joni Mitchell from her album Blue, so this jazz album was a departure from the folk songstress I was expecting. Her voice is still amazing and her lyrics poetry, but I found the music a little milquetoast under her commanding presence. It’s cool that The Jungle Line was the first commercial track to contain a looping sample. Critically I’m sure this deserves more stars, but personally I just didn’t enjoy it.
I’m not sure the concept part of the concept album works for me, and I’m not too take. With most of the tracks on here (they’re all good but I have higher expectations for Simon & Garfunkel). Still, America, A Hazy Shade of Winter, and Mrs. Robinson are classics so they lift the album up. Quite a lot of production on this album.
What starts as an inoffensive hip hop album, that sounds like it was engineered in a lab to appeal to the early 2000s Kerrang! crown, quickly gets boring. Then, as you tune into the truly terrible lyrics, crashes and burns. If the album title was a question I’d choose “die”.
Super energetic hard rock album, with lots of classic songs. What’s not to love? It seems rumours of it’s over-production have probably been exaggerated - Tony Visconti made some tweaks no doubt, but I don’t think that takes away from this snapshot of a band at the peak of their ability.
The Clash have to be my favourite punk band. Although they have the same fuzzy production and all-encompassing fury as other punk bands, they can also actually play. The tracks are varied enough - with garage punk, rock, and reggae in the mix - that the album pulls you along and leaves you wanting more. Grade A punk!
Inventive, creative, experimental, but ultimately underwhelming for me. Musically varied, but a bit bland and flat somehow. I listened and listened and couldn’t hear Paul McCartney chewing celery either. I’m glad they made this album, but it wasn’t made for me.
I’m not a Gary young man any more, so metal mostly doesn’t appeal to me. But it was refreshing to listen to to some music that I could sink my teeth into, no experimental, gentle, pop but raw guitars and drums. I’m always a little uncomfortable with the violent (and perhaps racist?) associations, but this album gave me energy.
Slow, jammy, rock. Rodger’s vocals are clear and strong. Not something that’d be going on my regular rotation list, but nice.
This somehow feels like a pastiche of Elvis more than Elvis himself. I like the idea that there was demand for him, a demand to go back to a time before political assassinations, perpetual war, and hippies. It’s a little cheesy, and the body percussion he seems to do on some tracks is weird, but I like it!
When this album opened with Roadhouse Blues, I thought it was going to be a favourite. The rest of the album didn’t really live up to that opening track, but I emptied listening to it.
Nice bluesy rock, reminded me a bit of Jethro Thull’s sound at times. Not something I’d add to my collection, but good music.
Five stars, no notes. Sam Cooke said that soul was “ the capacity to project a feeling”, and he turns it up to 11 on this album. It sounds like to took the crowd a little while to warm up but when they got going the really got going. It’s hard to beat James Brown’s “Live at the Apollo” for sheer raw energy and emotion, but I think this does it.
There’s something a little dated and 90s about the sound on some tracks, which is my a terrible thing. It was probably as a result of others copying Beck’s sound in the hopes of grabbing some of his popularity. A bunch of tracks are great, some are so-so, but the album as a whole is a good listen. I think you can hear the Dust Brothers production, there are echos of Paul’s Boutique here. It would feel a shame to give this three stars so I’m just going to give it 3.99999 stars and round up to four.
Psychedelic space rock with distorted guitars, wandering sax, and electronic drones, with Motörhead’s Lemmy on bass before and space age lyrics and spoken word poetry (some written by Michael Moorcock). Easy to get lost in while listening, but never boring. Orgone Accumulator and spoken-word Sonic Attack are my favourite tracks.
Electro-goth pitch-shifted vocals with 80s synths that make you think of neon lights and Miami. Slow songs with a Nordic bent (something a little Bjork about the intonations). Excellent music to listen to alone at dusk with your headphones on.
Driving guitar and drums and first-class composition, but the album doesn’t grab me the way I think it should. I think this is maybe because the Metallica trash metal sound is so imitated over the years, you don’t get the impact of hearing it for the first time here. And then there’s the perennial problem that, even though I grew up listening to metal, I’m now too old for it. I’d happily own this album, but I don’t think it’d get as much play in my collection as even other metal albums.
Jazz-beats, cool samples, and (mostly) good rhymes (a notable exception: “I can excel real well like a gazelle”). The themes seem to be about getting respect, but also about working together to lift up your brother.
Lovely, light-hearted lyrics and Lady Ella’s divine voice, can’t go wrong.
Queens hits are so familiar that I think I know the band, but I’d only heard a couple of these tracks before. Solid rock, bordering on operatic glam rock, with a few tracks (like Killer Queen) that elevate it to great.
Eclectic, energetic, anarchic, maverick. There’s so much to love about the album (I even think the cover is perfect).
Decent Britpop album. There’s some variety in the music and they seem to be a creative bunch. Dents resonate too much with me, but compared to most Britpop I could happily listen to this again.
I always want to like Elvis Costello more than I actually do. There's something about the sarcasm and cynicism of his voice and lyrics that stops me from fully embracing the songs. On this album the opener, Accidents Will Happen, and Oliver's Army had me bouncing along, but the rest of the album fell completely flat for me.
Tighter than Bayou country and overall solid tracks with a groove. Bad Moon Rising is the standout. Probably not an album I’d buy, but I’ll listen to it again. A strong 3 stars.
Rock and soul and bit of gospel thrown in occasionally. A couple of tracks
written by or co-written with Lisa Bonet (The Cosby Show’s Denise), the rest of the album is a one-man show with Kravitz playing all the instruments himself. I think he could have benefitted from others in the studio to bounce ideas off - his lyrics can be poor, and by the end of the album it sounds like he’s run out of musical ideas to keep the album fresh. Having said all that, this album has a groove to it and I like it!
Reading reviews and seeing mention of how noisy Hookworms’ previous albums were and how they occasionally sound like LCD Soundsystem, I had high hopes for this album. But overall it didn’t resonate with me at all - body or soul. It was fine.
Of all the major grunge bands, Alice in Chains are the ones I’m least familiar with. This album is great, a dark and depressing trip through heroin-addiction and self-disgust. I’m 30 years away from this music I grew up with, and it’s even less relevant to my life now than it was then, but it still fits like a glove.
An oozy, bluesy, claustrophobic punk album. The slide guitar is somehow threatening, Pierce’s vocals deranged, and the whole thing feels like you’re losing your mind on a night out. Overall, probably more influential that enjoyable for me, but still a strong 3.
Great pop songs. I can understand that the album sounded naive and backwards-looking at the time, but I like it.
