21st Century Schizoid Man is a classic, if not in its own right then as the basis for Power. I remember it as being impossible in Guitar Hero, might need to go back to it now. Could chop off a minute or three as it doesn't really develop in a particularly interesting way. The flute solo on I Talk to the Wind took it from just pleasant to pretty good. Epitaph kinda surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. I think that one's going into (semi)regular rotation. The back half (two-thirds? hour?) of Moonchild is absolutely asinine and a real time-waster, which sucks because the actual song part of the song is really nice. At least when the last track kicks in it reminds you that music exists, even if it's underwhelming.
Really well played stuff. Probably went crazy live
Another band I've meant to dive into and haven't yet, outside some hits (none from here). Great bass, fun vocals, good grooves. After the intro, everything felt like its own high point, with maybe Memories Can't Wait and Air (which at times vocally kinda reminds me of Sensor Ghost, a favorite local band) and Drugs being the highlights of the highlights
Right up my alley with this brand of power pop. In the Crowd and the last run of five tracks all stood out as great among the really good rest. I'll be checking out the rest of their stuff soon.
Great opener. Sedan Delivery rips. Great closer. Nothing bad in between. Hard to beat that.
It's very fine. Gets sleepier as it goes on.
Maybe I'm just a philistine but I don't quite *get* this one. It sounds good and the players are incredibly talented but it doesn't move me. More toward a 3.5 than a 3 but still
I always used to get the Verve and the Verve Pipe mixed up; I don't think I'll be doing that going forward. This was awesome, way better and different than I expected. Started good and just got better. This isn't perfection but it's closer to a 5 than a 4 so that's what it gets
Pleasant and competent boomer rock. Never felt more #american
I've heard this one plenty but decided to give it a full revisit. Title track gets play from me plenty and is as funky as ever. Grovallegiance is just so good, the perfect balance of fun and smooth and well-written and well-played. WSAFBCPR (not typing all that) is a perfect mission statement and I can hear so much of the funk-influenced rock over the next decades I love spawning out of it. The tones, the groove, the self-referentiality of it all. It's really funny how beautiful Promentalshit is musically considering the everything else. I might be a bit inured to it growing up on lots of hip-hop which is obsessed with shit bars, or maybe the music and the background singing is just too pretty, but either way I can overlook it. It's another one I come back to. Into You is one of the main reasons I wanted to come back to the album as a whole, I just couldn't really remember it. The relisten reminds me why; it's just not that great. Technically fine and it works structurally in the album but I just don't really feel anything toward it. Cholly is a nice closer and really could have worked as an intro too, maybe even better. Just a great album and I'm glad I gave it the full listen again.
This is the kind of 4.something that you round up to a 5 because it's damn good. You can hear the hunger, you can hear the reality, even when the sound is big you can tell it's not a group effort, it's two people killing it. Love love love it
Utterly forgettable but not bad. Space Child is like proto-penis music. Even though the album's basically 56 years old I can't help but think that all these ideas have been done better, either before or after Spirit took a crack at them, and I'd rather be listening to those takes.
Perfectly fine faux-Southern rock. You can tell they're posers because it all lacks a certain scumbaggery (which I do like in the right doses) in the vocal and the instrumental. That's probably how they managed to get so big. Wrote a Song for Everyone feels especially egregiously affected.
Excellent pop punk from a band that made a lot of not-excellent stuff after. Green Day isn't in my top few bands of the genre, but with their popularity, Dookie is easy to point to as one of the best examples of the genre. When I Come Around, Basket Case, Longview, Welcome to Paradise, you never go too long in this album without a reminder of how these three were just tapping into something.
Another one where "pleasant" feels like the best descriptor. Especially considering when it was released, it's good all the way through and especially interesting to me as someone already into east-west fusion through groups like Kula Shaker. Never quite rises to great, although the covers are nice and Sagar is a highlight that flies by despite the runtime.
folklore and evermore hit me in an unexpected way when they came out. I liked a couple Taylor Swift songs before them but I never really gave any album a full listen, but considering the 2020 of it all it felt like I may as well, and they ended up being pretty good. This one is highlighted by willow and no body, no crime, but a lot of the tracks didn't really stand the test of time and became pretty forgettable.
Beautiful horns, beautiful stuff. I'm not too well-versed in jazz but I love what it's done for what I am versed in. This is one of the rare times that the song titles really informed how I listened to an album which is really cool. I could feel the stories and motions in a way I surely wouldn't have picked up on listening blindly. The second track in particular felt so much like the "physical embraces" its subtitle describes (maybe I would have picked up on that one, I dunno). A very pleasant listen
I don't know if I've heard You Don't Know before or not but as soon as it started it sounded very familiar. Really fun listen that was probably just as fun to make, they were going wild in the studio especially for 1966
Another just fine entry from the Doors. Starting to think they're greatest-hit-album merchants
I listened to this when it came out but that was so damn long ago that I barely remember anything that wasn't a hit. Half of it was hits, though, which helps. The bass is the protagonist throughout. Mr. Brightside is still great, Somebody Told Me is still better. Jenny is great. ATTTID is kinda lame. A couple songs are pretty much nothing. The production and the synthpoppiness of it all evoke their native Vegas beautifully; whether that's because you know they're from there or because it's innate is hard to detangle. The writing and especially the delivery come off British even through that. Still think it's funny and valid that they threw out the original album because the Strokes' debut was just that much better. They couldn't reach those heights regardless, but this came as close as they could.
First track is really really nice stuff. Overall liked it more than I thought I would. Some beautiful strings and the emotions on display felt real and well-expressed
Mike Mills might be the GOAT. Orange Crush is a classic and still hits the same. The first three songs are great, Turn You Inside-Out is great, I Remember California is so great.
Billy Budd kinda goes. The Closer I Get is nice. It's all good enough, I just think it would have been a lot better had it had some more bite to it. The songs are begging for the snare to cut through, for louder guitar, a bigger and sharper sound in general. As is it kinda hangs there when it shouldn't
Pretty much everything Costello does is up my alley, and the beginning of it all is no exception. No misses on this one, and plenty of great stuff. Alison is so beautiful top to bottom, no wonder that's where they pulled the title from. The instrumentals on Red Shoes and I'm Not Angry are pretty peak too. Love the random jump back to the 50s on Mystery Dance, plus the fun and not-so-thinly veiled metaphor. Hell of a closer too. Insanely impressive as a debut.
Sex Machine is a jam and a half but the album as a whole doesn't really hit. It's fine. Thanks Drake's uncle for inventing slap bass, I really like that
What an opener. Perked up when Alright came on because of course I've heard it but didn't know who it was or that it'd be on here. Such a departure from the songs before and after it but still good of course. Lenny is great, Strange Ones is made for me, She's So Loose is great. You even get exit music. Another case of being rounded up to a 5 from somewhere above a 4
Wasn't sure where the album could go after that beginning. Really liked Big Sky but it could have done without a layer or three of random sounds. The rest of side one doesn't do much for me. And Dream of Sheep was nice and then I'm napping again. Jig of Life vacillates between beer commercial and Hornswoggle entrance music and neither do it for me. It's a 25% hit rate which is not great even if the good songs are pretty-to-really good.
Holy stank face on track one. Instantly knew I was gonna dig this. Can't really get much better when it comes to jazz for me and it's hard to explain why, it's just really engaging and a fun listen that overcomes the things that jazz doesn't retain from the more popular forms
So good. Such a brilliant run toward the start. Heads Will Roll is a perfect song, and Soft Shock and Skeletons are close to it. Runaway and Dragon Queen hit a back half high that brings it right back up. Karen is a top tier singer and lyricist, especially for the genre, and the other guys whose names I should know by now create such great synthpop worlds for her to inhabit.
It's weird, I've always been told I should check out Arcade Fire, and then I do now and the songs are good, but I still don't actually like them that much. I think I would love this if it were written the same but performed by anyone else. I don't know quite why. The instrumentation choices, the vocals, it all adds up I guess.
A release that couldn't have been any better than it is. Even outside the timing of the release, it's just perfect
God damn that DJ made my day. Jam Master Jay was so talented and laid the perfect sounds down for Run and DMC to do their thing. This album is so fun and infectious it's no wonder it was as huge and influential as it was. I'd heard most of it over the years but putting it all in one place really emphasizes it all. It's Tricky into My Adidas into Walk This Way is an insane run. Wonder if they weren't listening to some go-go out of DC when they put together the groove for Is It Live. I realized by the title track that they kinda invented nu metal too.
Another good excuse to revisit a classic. I love how it's not timeless. It's aged to perfection and only ever could have come from Rae and Ghost and the rest at this time in this place.
Aimee Mann is easily one of the best living songwriters and her first solo effort was insane. No weak points, but the run from Put Me on Top through Jacob Marley's Chain is perfection. I love when she goes poppier, like on here and Charmer. Hope something new's out soon
Probably my favorite Beatles album. The standouts to me are You Won't See Me, Girl, Nowhere Man, and What Goes on, but there's other good and great songs. By no means perfect, even adjusting for the era, and honestly not so far removed from what they did before like diehard fans like to think, but still great.
I've been meaning to check this out for a while. Two of my favorite songwriters of all time have brought up CAN in ways that made me excited to hear what they had, even if it took me until this impetus to actually do it. I understood exactly what each of them meant (one more than the other, but definitely both) by their respective endorsements right when the chorus came in on track one. I'll need to listen to their more focused stuff to get a real appreciation for the band, I think, but this is a good listen nonetheless. Doesn't ever rise above good for me, though.
Love this musically and the very 1996 writing and vocal suit it perfectly. Solid opener, Rags to Rags is great, Mental is great, there's a lot of good moments throughout
Already know and love basically every other song on here so filling in the gaps was really cool. Roland and Curt are next-level and getting to see them live is something I'm really glad I did. Head Over Heels is the level of song some people work a lifetime trying to create and they did it at like 23. Bonkers
A fun sophomore album that doesn't have the highest of highs. Definitely not an essential listen but one it's nice to have heard
A bit of a pleasant surprise. I hit play on the first track expecting to dread the next hour because I generally don't love British-accented rap. I still didn't love this, but it wasn't actively awful. Production is super dated but that's to be expected. Sittin' Here is the closest thing to replayable for me
What can you say that hasn't been said about the Black Album? Far from perfect, not their best, maybe a little too rocky, but there's just so much that's killer on here.
It's Puppets
