Being the 4th best of the big four of grunge is still better than most of the alternative-rock cheese that came after Seattle was mined for oil. I just wish somebody would've given Eddie the heads up that ending your song about a little boy killing himself in front of his class by scat-singing is probably in poor taste. I think this'll be all the Pearl Jam I need until I turn 43 and deeply resonate with Black after divorce number 2.
It only took two days for me to land on not only an album that I've heard before, but an album I have physically. Neat!
Singing like this must have hurt, surely. You'll hear Janis howl, squeal, and outperform basically anyone you could throw at her. She's so powerful, she makes the luscious and vibrant songs that make up this album swell up and practically burst at the seams. She's so powerful, she takes stripped back acoustic songs and makes them captivating, emotional, and lived in. Every song sounds like 100 bad days and nights, every note sounds worn down but kicking. The backing band plays second banana, but playing second banana to Janis fucking Joplin is still no easy feat. It runs out of steam by the end, but if I did what Joplin did on Crybaby I'd probably be on the floor having an asthma attack. Almost overwhelmingly powerful.
In his linear notes for the album "Live At Birdland" by John Coltrane, author and controversy magnet Amiri Baraka says of John Coltrane that "... his music is one of the reasons suicide seems so boring." Besides being an intentionally button-pushing and heavy statement, I think it gets to something important about music- it takes the big, evil, question mark planet we crawl on and stuffs it away for awhile. There's a lot to be afraid of, and a lot to mull over, but why not stop and smell the roses? And maybe, if you're lucky, the album you stumble on will permantly help you think through things.
Brian Wilson, using an unbeatable mixture of lover-boy anxiety, symphonic genius, and divine intervention, planted a bed of roses that manages to do more in 38 minutes than most bands can in entire discographies. Everytime you stop by, something new will stand out. You could go the cheesy route and say that this album is a look inside of the head of one of music's great geniuses, but I think that would do a severe disservice to the amount of pain that Brian Wilson faced in his life. No, this album is more beautiful than that- it's a gift to anyone that's ever loved and lost, to anyone who hasn't fit in, or who's acted unlike themselves. He was there, and he doesn't want us to get there. He planted this garden for us. May we all hang onto our egos.
39 minutes in a fun house that's burning down, where the mirrors are warping and the speakers are playing parade music that's in a time signature that doesn't exist. Absolutely (and understandably) not for everyone, but it's truly in a league of it's own. Mingus never did anything like this again, because it probably would've scarred him too much to dive back into the madness. Singular and engrossing, from the first horn squawl to the last one.
I should say now that I'm entirely pro 'pop albums stuffed with love songs.' Not everything needs to be juicy or hyperspecific or deeply confessional. There are songs here that do blend together (and the 2nd track STINKS) but it is hard to deny that Adele's voice is wonderful and her songwriting is solid. If the album had more songs on the level of "Hello", it would probably get a higher rating, but the fact that there is one at all means this is worth your time. Do the moms have the music? Maybe this time, but I'm still not sold on Alanis Morrisete.
Without the Pixies, the 90s would've sucked.
Well, more than they already did. It's not just the quiet / loud / quiet song structure that every band worth their weight in alternative rock radio pinched from this album, you could also make the case that the Pixies made being weird on rock records cool. They were not the first or the last of this ilk, but pop time signatures played as noisily as possible with reverance to surf music, punk, noise rock, and garage and interspersed with personal conversations and unintelligible lyrics will make anyone who can dig it feel very, very hip. I don't know what most of these songs are about, but I think that's the fun of it. Listen to a Steve Albini tone poem, pick up a guitar, and change the world.
Do I prefer the shaky, freaked out punk sound of Unknown Pleasures? Probably, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the beauty here. I do wish that a few of these songs didn't go on and on and on and on as they do, but to pretend like Ian Curtis's half-toneless mumbling isn't poetry would be dishonest. The dense, droney thing this album is going for did melt my icey heart by the end, but the 1st half is a bit repetitive. I wish we could've watched this band grow into something more, but what was laid to tape is worth celebrating.
Yeah, I don't get this one. Not that I don't get this music (I do, anyone with a Bandcamp account or an ex boyfriend with a delay pedal would) but I don't get why this is the one that's on this list. If there are more shoegazy, noisy indie-hipster hell rock albums on this list, they'll almost definitely be better than this one. Less boring, at the very least. All I can do is pray for My Bloody Valentine (or christ, even Duster!) and wait for this whole thing to blow over.
I feel bad being so mean, but this album constantly skirts the line between being pleasant enough and pissing me off. Final song in tribute to Jay Reatard? Pleasant enough. Annoying vocal effects making the sincerity of that tribute seem dubious? Pissing me off. If my friend was in this band, I'd probably go to the VFW shows and take their picture for Instagram.
I like this, I really do, but I'd be lying if I said I got what most of these songs were about on my first listen. That never took me out, per say- the hooks never stopped hooking and the beautiful production never stopped being beautiful- but I think one of the down sides of listening to a new album like this every day is that certain things are worth gestating on. Attack of the killer genre-fusion poppy concept record from outerspace? I'll relisten to this at some point soon.
I understand the low reviews here, but I kindly ask that anyone who is angry at this album for being kind of geeky and strange to relax a bit. I think this is worth hearing, maybe just for the strange stylistic choices and the silly (stupid) lyrics. I'd take a dozen of these over a sickly sweet California folky LP from the same time. Thanks for the weirdo record, Tim.
Easy to put into your pipe and smoke. Noisy and psychedelic, but also no-frills and raucous like all the best Stones albums are. What a winner, hooks on hooks and riffs on riffs.
Any white guy with a guitar can put his mouth to a harmonica and call himself a rockstar. Any middling white guy can pose as a rockstar by writing hackneyed songs about such varied and untapped ideas like how fun it is to have casual sex, New York, girls, Hollywood Boulevard, flowers, and how sad it is to have casual sex. Any middling white guy can abuse and exploit young women who are smarter and more talented than he is by pretending to be a rockstar. Ryan Adams innovates on this Grammy nominated (!) album by checking all three of these boxes at once.
It's oppressive, in the way a shitty bar-band is. Overstuffed with instruments, no silence or intimacy, just shitty songs about girls and suffocating organs. It would be interesting (in a sick way) to close your eyes and play house listening to this album (imagine your shitty, cigarette stench boyfriend coming in and playing these songs for you...) if it weren't for the fact that not a lick of it is interesting. For over an hour, this Ephebophilic shitbag pushes you through song after song of meandering, suicidal notebook poetry. (Not suicidal in the sense that the songs are about suicide, but suicidal in the sense that it made me want to find a sharp edge and rub my neck against it.)
In a world where arguments about separating the art from the artist happen constantly, I believe it would do the world good to cut out the artists that aren't worth keeping around and then getting onto the musicians that matter. I'm not sure if Ryan Adams is in the first draft of people we should collectively remove from our minds (Marilyn Manson, Gary Glitter, that tattooed fuck from Falling in Reverse) but he's certainly among those musical talents.
As a proud Touch & Go Records stooge (the first album I ever hid from my mom was Songs About Fucking) I can admit that this is on the weaker end of their mostly flawless 1980s / 1990s output. It doesn't rock hard enough, damn it... you want the guy to scream and for the guitars to go crazy but they don't. And it's not like a Slint thing (also Touch And Go... they must've had a dousing wand for shit like this) because it never really feels like it's building up to anything. There are faster songs, and those are solid. Still imposed by a vocalist who refuses to yell.
I think this album does act as an interesting glimpse into an under discussed time in rock history, though: the post-Soundgarden, pre-Creed no man's land of VH1 and MTV nonsense that gave The Meat Puppets a popular(ish) album and Daniel Johnston a major label contract. How into that time period of music you are depends how much of this sort of noise rock brow beating you can take.
