I do not have the musical skill, knowledge, or aptitude to speak on the craft here. As a listener though, I dig a bluesy electric guitar just jamming out, that is a mood I could sit with for a while.
Before this listen my only engagement with Van Morrison was hearing Brown Eyed Girl on many a summer playlist. While I really enjoy that song I’m not sure this album is going to be my go to choice for chilling. I appreciate the folk/soul sound, but it failed to win me over.
This feels like an album you listen to while spending time with someone special or to remember spending time with someone special. So maybe in that specific situation I’ll return to a few of these tracks.
Not familiar with Frank Ocean, a musician I’ve heard of thanks to being a critical darling but I’ve never listened to yet. So I’m going to just jot down the notes as I go along.
Early part of this album indulges in too many tangents. It’s distracting. When he finds his groove, though, the tracks improve.
Appreciate the theme of frustration with affluence and proximity to wealth, throughout the album, though it is at times a bit muddied. Are we observing or participating? I can't decide. The complaints also feel a little halfhearted.
Okay! The Track "Pink Matter" has a wonderful, if sincerely misplaced Dragonball Z reference. Mentions of Majin Buu earn points from this reviewer. I'm an easy mark. Also , I see you there Andre 3000.
Finished. The second half of this album is high quality. Polished production, expected given the names associated, that gets labeled as neo soul. Matching storytelling with the R&B beats. I dig it.
"It doesn't matter if we all die."
This is the opening lyric to the opening track, "One Hundred Years" and captures the reputation of the The Cure. It is also the nihilistic tone that permeates this entire album. An album of intrusive thoughts, repeating repetitively, exhausting and animating in equal parts. Robert Smith is trying to get these thoughts out of his head, if they end up in yours, well that’s just collateral damage. Sorry you entered the blast radius. Beware of bleakness.
"I will never be clean again."
According to the tales of the the recording of this album there was heavy drug use, confrontational episodes, and an all around depressive atmosphere. Well, you've got an album that reflects such origins. The result is a singular sound, with one track blending into and sounding like the next.
"Is it always like this?"
It is an album of messed up rockers playing music despondently because what else are they going to do? Be respectable? This wasn’t meant for you. It was never meant for you. You’re just peaking in. That sound you hear. It’s a sound that rises from the haze, the middle of their mess. It is the sound you get when you point a camera and microphone at that mess to record the degradation. It is, in a word, pornography.
"Waiting for the death blow."
My first 90s album of this exercise! Yay!
Green Day has always been a favorite of mine, though never in my absolute favorites lists. This album was my introduction and remains my preference of their discography. Full disclosure, Dookie was one of my initial 10 albums from Columbia House back in the day. Remember them? It has been a minute since I listened to this album in full but I was pistoning my hands with every Tre Cool mini drum-fill like I was 15 again.
This album runs on juvenile energy ("Welcome to Paradise" & "She") and wild unfocused anxiety. ("Longview"; "When I Come Around" ; and "Basket Case"). I recall all of it. Do you have the time to listen to me whine?
As a teenager who lived through it too, it is hard to convey how this energetic sound, coming right on the heels of grunge, just popped. It was like hearing color. And I love grunge. It was just nice to also have some pop punk back on the menu too and Billy Joe Armstrong and these guys were everywhere in 1994.
I’m not sure the album truly merits a “5”. It’s a solid 4, but personal history and 90s nostalgia bump it up to a 5 for me.
So I was glad to come back to this albun. A reminder of another time. A time when I was young enough to laugh at poop jokes. "hehe...dookie”
Yep, this is music that could potentially be played at and get you moving if you’re at the club, however, I’m not at the club and if I was I’d probably be a wallflower. Beyond that it is an album that fails to achieve escape velocity from the club for me. One track I knew, the “Back to Life” hit. Less than a handful I would return to, “Keep On Movin’” & “African Dance”. The rest…
If this is still on the list come the next edition, I think it’s a fine candidate to update with a newer album.
“How we live in his existence just being
English upbringing, background Caribbean“
New listen for me. So an odd thing happened as I listened to this one. I initially bounced off of it, just not for me, but something kept nagging the back of my mind. Then halfway through the album, around the track Five Man Army, it started hitting for me. And by the end I wanted to start it over and listen to those first few tracks again.
Ah there it is, that start to “Safe From Harm” put me in mind of 311’s “Beautiful Disaster” and that brought the whole album into focus. The beat heavy sound with bits of electronic, reggae, and rap. Wouldn’t be surprised to find out Massive Attack was influential on them. (Upon reading the Wikipedia on this album I see that this album and band are a massive (pun not intended) influence on many artists.)
Trip hop. That makes sense. I dig it. A 3.5 that I don’t feel like rounding up to a 4.
I’m probably adding these tracks to the playlists:
Safe From Harm
Blue Lines
Five Man Army
Daydreaming
Lately.
MGMT missed me. Completely. Their sound. There timing. I’d never heard of this band until last year (2025). Now I know that probably says more about me and my disconnect from popular music at the time than anything else. They hit at a time when I was not listening to anything new and most of my music listening time was given to things like audiobooks.
To my ears, this is an unfocused mess. Just a mishmash of influences being tried out to see what sticks. I can see the appeal in the approach but it does not work for me. One intriguing track and the rest sounds like an EA Sports Menu screen . I’ll find my chill music elsewhere.
How? How is this included on Rolling Stones 500 greatest albums of all time? Now, I feel like I’m the one being punked.
First impressions: This sounds like the Thursday night band at the local roadhouse. They're trying things out but don't have the energy to be the weekend act. There is potential though. Just let them jam for a bit and they might get there.
The Southern rock sound. Blues with bits of Appalachia, Bluegrass, and folk in it. I dig it. The first half of the album (A double album divided into four parts) was stronger for me than the second half.
Part 1- The Raven sounds like a live music jam. Fun and inviting.
Part 2- The Wilderness has that slowing down from the jam sound because we need to go to church the next morning. See they're practicing to be that Saturday night act and need a few songs to soften the end of the night.
Part 3 - Consider & Part 4 - Rock & Roll is Here to Stay must be the midweek brainstorms for next week's set. Again, this is the weaker half of the album for me and where you find a lot of the bloat. A few of these songs are keepers.
Conclusion: A bit bloated, however, understandably so. Seems like a side project, a space for these musicians to indulge in what catches their interest. More of a 2.7 for me that I'll round up to a 3.
“Music is my savior…I was maimed by rock and roll.”
It was raining the day this album showed up on my project. I listened to it walking through the rain with the dog before the sun came up. It was still raining when I was listening to this album during my morning commute. It added to the introspective ambience.
I wish I had found this album earlier in life. I wonder if my entire life would’ve turned out different had I found this album during my teenage years when it came out. Like that Jim Belushi movie where he gets to see what it would’ve been like if he had hit a home run instead of striking out in a high school baseball game. Would’ve it have been a parade of fashionable lovers, a garage full of cars, and the career fast track? Okay, probably not.
What I do know is that my mind wanted to manufacture years, decades, of nostalgia for this album as I was listening to it for the first time today. I can imagine hearing this on a college rock station. I can hear this on a NPR’s Rock & Roots alternative rotation. It is infused with this certain 90s sensibility, a yearning to experience the epiphany that figures life out and the disappointment when it doesn’t occur. And it is all soundtracked by pure uncut 90s alternative rock country. Needless to say, I loved the album. Solid 4.
New listen and going in blind. Never heard of ABC before.
Bombastic opening track, that really has big Phantom of the Opera energy. As the album proceeds from there I can tell they are going for over the top self-importance. A certain Broadway presentation. However, as I reached the track, “Tears are Not Enough” it started to get me laughing. It was difficult to take it seriously. Yes, this is how part of the 1980s sounded!
That said, I can appreciate indulgent spectacle, even this one, and found myself enjoying stretches of this album. Maybe stretches is too generous. When I forgot myself I enjoyed fragments of this album. Everything has a very disco sound meeting the 80s on top of a synthesizer. As a child of the 80s the synth-pop will always feel familiar though I never developed a deep love for it.
What a voice! I'm more familiar with her other album, "Back to Black" but still enjoyed seeing this one pop up on the list for today.
Listening to Amy Winehouse is like hearing a shaman access the spirit world, she communes with good spirits and evil spirits where none of them act predictably. She displays such an array of emotions you feel them reflected back at you. Late night hope, future regret, snide cattiness, frustration, complaint, playfulness, desire, or musing.
A voice brimming with charisma and songs written with deep character. I just wanted to press play and let this album burn all the way down like a cigarette left in the ashtray.
There was that window of time in the 1990s where a bunch of people got into layering beats with traditional cultural music. I always kinda dug it. I was a fan of Enigma which William Orbit was a contemporary of as well. This album came out the same year as The Cross of Changes. The next year an album of Chanting monks from Spain would go double platinum. It was a thing at the time.
So whatever you call it EDM, ambient, trip hop, new age world beat. This is an album I wouldn’t mind throwing on to work to or just vibe with.
"No, it's just more lock-jawed pop-stars, Thicker than pig-shit, Nothing to convey, They're so scared to show intelligence, It might smear their lovely career"
Whenever I get my album for the day I always note the release year. This being a 2004 album makes perfect sense when the first three tracks are so overtly and clumsily political. I'm not going to fault an artist for earnestness, but damn, if these lyrics weren't painfully cumbersome. That continues throughout the album even as we move from broad political topics to more personal losses and complaints. In fact this whole album has a whiney-ness to it.
Along the way, however, I found some narrative threads worth pulling on for brief moments. "The World is Full of Crashing Bores" and "First of the Gang to Die" both earned back enough of my attention to see where they were going. After the album ran out of steam and thankfully ended.
I'm told The Smiths are worth checking out but Morrissey on his own is burdened by trite songwriting and a milquetoast rock sound. I think this is what the kids call Cringe nowadays.
Kids, as you get older you're going to find that you need to listen to good music. This is good music.
I'm halfway through the first track and I can tell I'm going to like this album. The music is full of warm tones and lifting solos. I could feel the breeze off the ocean hitting my face. I could taste a splash of spiced rum in my drink. Where did this drink come from? Don't worry about it. I listened to this album on repeat twice before I even thought to stop it. I listened to it throughout the day. It was a welcome addition to the day.
Reading up on this album afterwards tells me that Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd's Jazz Samba kicked off the bossa nova craze in America. Well for that I thank them. This whole abum was a delight.
"When I wake up in my makeup, Have you ever felt so used up as this?
Album opens with the propulsive mania of the title track "Celebrity Skin". Its got enough wild confidence to throw its name into those "Best Side 1, Track1" arguments. I don't know how well it would fair overall, but any tracks on the other side of the argument probably don't want to get in a tangle with this one either so who knows.
"Awful" loses some of the wild mania to put a glib smile on female rebellion while "Hit So Hard" brings out the distortion in sound and life.
"Malibu" and "Reasons to Be Beautiful" grapple with disenchantment settling in. Now we're faded somewhere in Hollywood.
"Dying" - This is my surprise face to find out Billy Corgan hand his hand on this track. It could've slotted neatly in on "Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness." In fact Corgan got involved on a handful of tracks I see.
Back half of the album is a bit more muted. "Northern Star" is a haunting lament in context "I knew I'd cherish all my misery, alone." that is well paired with proximity to the track "Boys on the Radio" on the album. By the time you reach the end of "Petals" you feel a little fatigued but that maybe going outside and getting some rays of sun would do you good.
Final Thought: There is something about that 90s alternative rock sound. I grew up with it, I still love it. Enjoyed this one. A deep through line of how the pop culture fame machine chews through young hopefuls. Given Courtney Love's position in rock history, perhaps she is one of the few voices that should be heard less as pretentious to on this topic and maybe a little more experienced.
My body was actively rejecting this album as I listened to it. I had to immediately put on my high energy playlist when it ended.
I was quite surprised to see I had a "liked" song on my Spotify from this artist. It was "The Wanderer" from Dion and The Belmonts. Guess I enjoyed the Doo-wop / Rock and Roll era much more. Apparently Dion was not happy with this album and called it "funeral music." I agree. Let's just bury it and not speak of it again.
"First of all, we'd like to thank Jethro Tull for not putting out an album this year." - Lars Ulrich opening Metallica's 1992 Grammy acceptance speech.
So I get Jethro Tull is known as the prog rock band with the flutes, but for most of my life I've known them as that old-not-really-"Metal"-band that beat Metallica for a Grammy back in 1989 for Best Hard Rock/Metal performance. Thus, here I am nearly forty years later about to listen to a Jethro Tull album in full for the first time. I've heard a few songs here and there over the years, just FYI.
...And I enjoyed it. There is much to chew on here. This is one of those pieces of art that I think age has helped me appreciate. I would not and did not have the patience for an album like this in my younger days. Now, I'll sit with those guitar riffs and wait for that flute to drop. Musing about "God and Religion" and throwing you hands to the sky in frustration with the whole affair. Okay, make your argument. I'm listening. This is the type of album you want to have discussions about, good or bad. Whether you enjoyed it or not.
Still think Metallica got robbed in 1989.
“I lost myself in a familiar song. I closed my eyes and I slipped away.”
Every track ended with a booming radio voice declaring “This is Classic Rock!” Was that just me? Hell Yeah!
Seriously, one of the load bearing pillars of 1970s rock that was already classic when I was old enough to start listening to music on the radio. I came of age in the MTV era though so I have limited nostalgia for Boston.
Still, this album rocks. The first side is 100% top tracks. “More than a Feeling” will take you away. There’s a reason the cover has a spaceship. And “Peace of Mind” is the perfect companion track to bridge to the top shelf classic that is “Forplay/Longtime.” Second half of the album is a slight dip in enjoyment for me but only as compared to side one. All in all, it made for the perfect Friday drop.
“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer.”
This is my first time listening to this full album. I’d heard Superstition but that was about it.
I’m having trouble thinking of words to describe how this album is making me feel. It’s smooth and funky. In a single word, groovy. The instrumentation is high quality craftsmanship and Stevie Wonder’s voice is something to behold.
My single complaint is some of the repetition within the individual songs reached a point of annoyance for me. (Thinking of the line “Maybe your baby done made some other plans.” On the second track “Maybe Your Baby”) It’s a small annoyance, because overall this album is the fix for what ails you.
I can see myself getting in a mood to return to this album.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter.”
This feels like a You-had-to-be-there album. You had to be at the club when this kicked in. You had to be on some chemicals to pick up what the Chemical Brothers were laying down. You had to be there when John Wick murdered his way across the entire rave dance floor.
The Chemical Brothers were heralds. The sound of EDM would come to influence all of pop music, or at least seemed to to me. And it’s hard for me to assess that. If competently done, it sounds…fine enough to dance and trip to, I guess, but beyond that. I don’t know. For me I'm not sure how this music transcends that simple functionality. Block Rockin' Beats went hard and I can see it soundtracking a good action scene or sports highlight mix tape. but again, that goes back to the you had to have been there of it all.
As far as the EDM type music goes this is electronica that seems to have less charisma that say a Daft Punk, or am edge like the Prodigy. I dig it well enough: it’s fun. Fun for a night, just not forever.
Alright! Going in I know this album already has two all-timer tracks for me in "One" and "Mysterious Ways." The rest of the album is mostly uncharted territory that I'm eager to discover.
I think i mentioned in a previous review from this project that I will not fault an artist for being earnest. I appreciate earnestness and that is probably why I have a higher tolerance for U2 that the average person who is not already a big U2 fan. They tend to be a polarizing group as I understand.
Zoo Station - loving that distortion on both the vocals and the electric guitar. Inject that 90s sound right into my ears.
Even Better Than the Real Thing - Okay, I remember this track too. These first two tracks put me in mind of "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" which came a few years after this but was one I really liked and I'm digging the proto-versions here.
One - Like I said, this one is an all-timer for me. The quiet pleading, the punctuating outbursts that attempt an understanding. Bono pulls off all the vocal musings. It also contains one of my favorite lyrics, "Have you come here for forgiveness? Have you come to raise the dead? Have you come here to play Jesus, To the lepers in your head?" That'll sit in my head all day.
Until the End of the World - I'm loving this track too. Am I contemplating a 5 here? I think I'm contemplating a 5 here. Wild! Lets see how the back half of the album hits.
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses - First track that made me somewhat impatient. Attempts to achieve soaring lyrics and guitar parts, but the title is too much and its repetition within the track does not bring it back around.
So Cruel - Keeping the pace slow here. Not a bad thing, per se, we'll see how it plays out.
The Fly;
Mysterious Ways:
Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around the World
After the lull of the previous two tracks we pick back up with a great three track run here that really puts that 5 in sight for me.
Ultra Violet (Light My Way) & Acrobat keep the energy going with Love is Blindness bringing it all to a definitive conclusion.
So what i thought might've been some minor pacing problems turned out to be solid deep breath between two great stretch of tracks. Overall this was a solid hour of music. U2 has always been a omnipresent part of the rock landscape during my life. So I was never surprised to encounter them, Live Aid, award shows, Super Bowl halftime, unasked for in your iPod. They're just there. Now maybe I need to listen to some more deep cuts. I think I enjoy U2 more than just in passing. Color me shocked. This whole listening project has demonstrated to me all the music I've missed in my life so far. I'm glad I'm doing this.
