Solid listen but I prefer the second half to the first. Maps is the standout.
Just lovely. Dreamy without being soporific. Psychedelic without pissing me off. Grace Slick is a bit under-utilised despite being the coolest thing about the band.
Your enjoyment of this album may be contingent on whether you liked Take Me Out in 2004 and still like it today. Luckily, I did and do. FF's jaunty, spiky hooks are hard to resist and I find Alex Kapranos' twinkly-eyed innuendos and debonair affectations to be charming and fun. The album tracks are better and more interesting than I remembered.
Pleasant but largely indistinguishable and overly loungey. I found myself craving a bit more grit and vinegar in the music or lyrics to offset the very sweet, dainty vocals. The glimmers of heavier influence are tantalising but not quite enough to cut through the sugar.
A perfect crystalline voice and nice songs, though they're not as emotive and essential as some of her older work that I prefer. The last track is a horrible direct hit to the heart of my jazz aversion and almost retroactively taints the whole thing.
Just wonderful, not a bad thing about it. It has a bittersweet melancholy warmth that's so lovely to spend time in. Sidewinder and Ignoreland are insanely underrated to me, but they're up against some all-time heavy hitters. My first five stars, yay!
The Stones aren't my favourite of the big bands of their era, but I like them well enough and I quite like this album. The songs are solid throughout but there aren't really any towering standouts for me. The miscellaneous sprawling approach has its appeals, but ultimately eighteen tracks of Stones sleaze is far more than I ever need in one go. (I could've at least done without Sweet Black Angel, regardless of how people bend over backwards to explain that it's so cleverly political and well-intentioned and Angela Davis would've totally appreciated the condescension, actually.)
Super cute. Most of the songs are too brief and sedate to really be anything, but as a whole it's a feel-good listen with charmingly melodious vocals. Nice to have this as a short, sweet sorbet after Exile on Main St.
Most of the songs didn't do a whole lot for me, though overall I liked the warmly atmospheric instrumentation and touches of fretless bass. Coyote and A Strange Boy are lovely. I can't help preferring her earlier work – I think I just prefer those higher, brighter vocals.
The title track is dynamite and the rest offer diminishing returns, but I still enjoyed this. Good vibes and great vocals all round.
Not my flavour of rock at all. Pour Some Sugar On Me is irresistible dumb fun, but I couldn't find much good will for the rest. Love Bites and Hysteria are boring dirges for such big hits, and the album could've comfortably been two or ten tracks shorter. It's so sex-obsessed that it's unintentionally hilarious, though I prefer that priapic stupidity to their attempts at heartfelt balladeering or, God forbid, political commentary.
Initially sounds like a migraine, then gradually becomes sort of hypnotic and toe-tapping. Not often pleasant but perversely intriguing, and easier to follow on a second listen. Tracks 2, 3, and 4 are hard work and physically horrible on my eardrums, but the rest are more enjoyable and less antagonistic. We Fenced Other Gardens, They Don't Want Your Corn and Flow My Tears are good. I was thinking it's music I need to be in a slightly masochistic Kollaps-y mood for – then I saw their artwork for There's Always Room on the Broom and it gave me a big chuckle.
An album that had totally passed me by. It's novel and not unpleasant, but once I'd heard a couple of tracks I'd got the idea more than enough. The shine really comes off as the album goes on, and it's not something I think I'll revisit. Maybe you had to be there!
