It's quite good, though it is a little on the slow side for my personal tastes. That said, there were several songs here that even I enjoyed - the titular song, and Ms Vanderbilt were my personal highlights. I'd give 3.5 if I could.
There's some extremely important issues here. As a person, I couldn't be any more different from the artist. But the stories of community to fight against marginalisation still resonate strong. But outside of that, I'm not much of a fan. It's too slow, I almost fell asleep in the middle.
I quite like this one. It really does feel like the most 1970s thing to ever exist. The tracks are smooth, relaxed, confident and cool. Listening to it as an album, the themes here tend to feel a bit repetitive. However I won't mark it down for that - it can be forgiven as I believe the songs are intended to be scattered around a film? And not played back-to-back. I've not seen the film to be certain though.
I enjoyed Think the most - it stands out from the others. Not to say the others are bad by any means.
AHHH! This is wonderful! Caribbean music isn't a thing that I've had an enormous amount of exposure to - media like films and games set there being the prime source. I've always loved that music, but lacked the leads to find more. Until now. These tracks are excellent, clearly the works of masters in their fields.
An enjoyable time. Some familiar favourites, and some covers. The covers strike me as somewhat weird choices though, and kind of break me out of the music. That said, Cobain's vocals are incredible.
A massive dichotomy. Fun music, deeply disturbing themes. I like the instrumental tracks the best, and Pinball Wizard is a classic. But overall not a fun time due to the themes dealt with.
A confusing experience. I come into this not being a fan of hip hop in the slightest. But there's some beats and themes here that make listening quite enjoyable. The comedic elements also make for a fun time.
But there's one giant elephant in the room. What on earth is De La Orgee doing here? It is so out of place, that it actively makes the rest of the album worse.
I liked this, but listening to it was quite the trip. The electronic noises are fun, but occasionally off-putting. Sea of Tears, and State of Mind are two extremely beautiful tracks, I loved them both. Jah the 7th seal has a really fun effect, playing with the audio channels. The computer I was listening on crashed during one of the sci fi sounding sections, which really freaked me out too.
Good fun, but I'll give my computer a break for now!
A thoroughly weird, off putting, disconcerting experience. A confounding cacophony. Variable volume blasting out my ear drums. An unpleasant time was had listening to this - it sounded like an anxiety attack in audio form.
Starting out, I didn't really know what to expect. At the end, I'm somehow completely unsurprised by what I got. How those two can coexist, I don't know, but they did it. The end product is an interesting mix of fun, eclectic, "substances", relaxation, and love. I generally enjoyed my time with this album, though a handful of moments either grossed me out, or got a little too trippy.
An extremely pretty, perhaps relatable story of loneliness, falling in love, being turned down, coming to terms with rejection. And then a side story at the end, with themes about mental health and acceptance of neuro-diversity, which would have been extremely forward thinking for the time. I thoroughly enjoyed my time listening to this, relating to the themes very strongly.
Generally, this embodies my typical experience with hip hop. It's overwhelmingly masculine. Overwhelmingly sexualised. It's crude, sexist, loud, and repetitive. Disappointing to learn that S/TLB's Roses and Hey Ya are likely just the exceptions to the rule. That said, Toilet Tisha hit like a truck. I have to praise it, for having the courage, or perhaps self-awareness to address an issue as heavy as teen pregnancy, leading to suicide.
Is it hypocrisy, not connecting the dots between the hyper-masculine culture the album endorses and the social outcomes which result? Or is it setting the listener up, showing them all these themes and acts they might think of as "fun" (though I think of them as disgusting), before smashing them in the face with the consequences of their actions? That's not a question that I feel I can answer definitively.
Though even the most masterful of plot twists cannot fully forgive what came before. 2/10.
Having no idea about the language, I really only have the choice to look at this one through a similar lens to BVSC, just judging purely from the vibes the music give. Overall, I had a quite fun time listening to this. The tracks are generally quite bouncy and fun, offering something worthwhile, even to a person who does not speak a word of Arabic.
There's some vibes here, musical motifs perhaps, that draw parallels from the 70s and 80s in the West. Things like the synths, and a cover of an extremely well known song. Adapting a foreign movement like that, and putting a local cultural spin on it acts as a bridge, making the foreign culture more accessible to a Western audience (read: me).
Would I listen again: Maybe. Honestly, it's pretty unlikely. But possible all the same.
This might be a controversial opinion, but I feel like the skills of guitar and vocals are quite mismatched on this one. The guitar is amazing, some of the best you'll hear anywhere. The vocals though? I feel like the main singer is stretching his voice a bit too far, and it kind of detracts from the experience. Also, there's some problems with pacing and timing - two of the tracks seem to go on a bit too long for my preferences, knocking the listener out of the groove, so to speak.
Overall, I feel like this is quite a good album, albeit with a few flaws which prevent it from evolving into the great album, that tracks like "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "Proud Mary" indicate that it had to potential to be. I don't want that to sound like I didn't enjoy my time listening (I absolutely did), but more that it could have been better.
I feel as though this one as a whole is meant to be taken through a Marxist lens? At least, that's what my inner pol-sci graduate is telling me. That said, I never really wrapped my head around old Karl. There's a vibe here of despair at the state of the world, the way that the economic powers that be exploit the worker, and leave them alienated from the products of their own labour. People are forced to toil, with little hope of salvation. Even if they want to jump the border to a place of more opportunity, they may well just be moving somewhere worse.
I quite liked the instrumentals in this album - it's a real shame that the one hiding in track zero really does seem to be lost to us. (I looked a little too, and found nothing, not even a rubbish quality YouTube rip) I feel they do quite a wonderful job of showing the sense of hopelessness which pervades the album. The manufactured, synthetic vibe captures the story of alienation from life and products of labour.
Would I listen again: Unlikely. Even though it's very well made, the themes don't exactly make for an entertaining time. The instrumentals are perhaps an exception.
Very well done, thank you for making me feel depressed at the state of the world.
Well. this one was quite the roller coaster. I guess if I expected anything, that would be just about it.
I'm not loving what I presume is a stylistic choice to lower the audio quality of the vocals in some of the tracks. Perhaps it's a me thing, but it just makes it extremely difficult to discern what is actually being said here. It essentially detracts from the excellent quality music that the foggy voice is being imposed over the top of. But this was only really a problem on the first two of the tracks. The rest - they're great. Instruments, voice, tempo, tone. Everything came straight from the heart in these tracks.
Would I listen again: To the whole thing? probably not. But to individual tracks? Yep. There's five here that are going on my "new favourites" playlist, so that's a pretty solid performance.
Overall, this way more chill than I came into it expecting. I know I'm usually a fan of the more energetic works, but I actually quite like this one.
I enjoyed the recurring theme of "having the sunshine". I'm not certain, but I'm taking from it a message of having destiny in your own hands, being able to make of your life whatever you choose. Personal freedom. A theme that resonates quite strongly with me.
Also, there's a lot of interesting juxtaposition going on here. Modern vs Traditional is well explored - coming out when it did, a time of technological revolution, makes this especially relevant. There's also cultural comparisons going on, Latin Simone being a key here. Slow Country brings the Rural vs Urban. All the choices to be made reinforce the idea of self determination the early tracks in the album propose. songs
Would I listen again: To some, maybe. Unlikely to the whole album.
Rating: I had a fun time listening along to this, grooving, and some interesting themes that can make you think. It's quite good on the whole, and didn't have any glaring weak points, in my opinion anyway. It feels like the definition of a high 4 star to me.
The early tracks give the feeling of being stuck in limbo, or purgatory. Or maybe the world's slowest phone queue. And it's not changing as we proceed through. There's a weird amount of death being mentioned here too. I'm a little worried about the mindset which might have led to the creation of this. Nothing happy. Nothing relaxed. An dark place. The composers' mental demons are plain as day to me in these tracks. I'm not sure exactly what demon is being referred to here, but it still evokes extremely powerful feelings of struggle and empathy.
It certainly did it's job, putting out a feeling, a story of suffering, and 99% hopelessness. The final lines "I must fight this sickness, I must find a cure" offer a hope spot to finish on.
I think this album is emblematic of the ethos of the 1001+ album journey. They're albums you have to hear. Not necessarily because they're good, but because they changed something, or created an entirely new way of making music.
The soundscape here is overbearing. Like the din of a busy road in the morning peak hour - there's no stops. No breaks. By and large, everything sounds far too squished. Many instruments compressed on top of each other, making most of them indecipherable. Like they've been thrown in an audio blender, if you will.
But somehow, despite my mind telling me all these reasons why it's bad, why I shouldn't like it - my heart just won't listen. It's not the best thing ever, but I still quite enjoyed my time listening. I'm awfully confused on the whole, but that's ok. Synthethized Shenanigans is what I expected, and what I got.
Rating: A high 3, low 4. I guess I'll put a 3. I've got no more words to justify that. And if I did, you wouldn't be able to hear them through the $2 shop mic and screechy guitars anyway.
I generally like to try and synthesise my experience with the album into a few lines, maybe a paragraph at the end in this section. But for this one, I'm really struggling to do that. There's actually a couple of tracks here that I like, or liked parts of. Graveyard; Pittsburgh to Lebanon; and Human Cannonball are highlights. But there's other parts that are just weird. Indeed, 90% of the album's running time is taken up by weirdness.
I've really not got much of an idea exactly what the band were trying to achieve in making this work. The best guess I've got is "Have some fun, take some drugs, see what we make, and maybe we'll sell some copies of it, to pay for the whole experience". It's puzzling. Some people bought copies of this? Enough people to garner enough attention to end up on a list of 1000 albums you need to hear? I got it for free and I think I might have overpaid.
Rating: There is a very stark dichotomy going on here. A very bimodal distribution of my enjoyment. Fun bits, crazy bits, unintelligible bits. I think the only thing I really can do here is to plop it down right in the middle of the scale. 3.
The classics are that for a reason. They stand the test of time. Seven decades later, some of the tracks on this album are still an enjoyable time to listen to. But the classics are that for another reason. They're selectively chosen, specifically to be the best of the best. Survivorship bias means that only the highlights persist in our minds. There's weaker songs, which just end up forgotten. This album has songs which fall in both categories.
Also, I suspect that Little Richard may have been scamming his record label here. They contracted him for twelve unique songs. But somehow, he snuck several copies of the same track in here under different titles. Joking aside, it did get a bit repetitive hearing numerous tracks with the exact same vocal and instrumental motifs.
Rating: This album has a few stand-out tracks, a few tracks which are pretty average, and a healthy dose of self-plagiarism. But on a more serious note, even the "bad" bits are still perfectly enjoyable. It's at no stage a chore to slog through. So I think that a fair rating would be 4.
They're talented, but perhaps they need to pick a lane? There's a weird smug vibe here - like White is saying "Look at all this stuff I can do!", at the expense of the album being a coherent work.
I know it's strange, I tend to think of albums as little more than a collection of songs. But in this case, what's going on here is so disjointed, that I can't look past that. And then a critical hit from an emotional nuke to close.
Rating: Random/10. It's all over the place, I feel like if I'm trying to assign a rating, I might as well be throwing darts at a board. In a tornado. While standing upside down. Because I think that's what the artists did while composing this. Well I got the 14 segment of the board. So I guess that's a 7/10. Or a high 3, low 4 on this scale.
Kind of embarrassed on behalf of my country for this one. I promise there actually is some music you'd describe as music from here! Some of it is even good! Try Midnight Oil; Men at Work; Cold Chisel; or Inxs if you want some less painful 80s Aussie rock. Anything but this. This sounds like a rough pub after midnight. A bunch of men, each a dozen drinks into their nights, just screaming.
40 minutes of sheer "What the hell was that?" I think it's safe to say "The Birthday Party" won't be playing at my birthday party later today. At least this album knows where it belongs, it's in the title after all.
Jazz is a genre I know despairingly little about. I sort of wish I knew more, to pick up on what I suspect are a whole host of musical references which are flying over my head. Many sequences and motifs which are ringing bells in my mind, hints, clues and shout-outs which are slipping through my fingers. Though, I think it's only fair that I go into these blind, as I have with the other albums to date. It's been a recurring theme through many of my reviews, that I've said I enjoy the instrumental tracks more than the vocalized ones. Perhaps, judging on my past form, the reader might expect that I'll look favorably on this?
Well if so, the reader is absolutely correct. I certainly enjoyed this. For what is practically my first foray into the world of Jazz, I feel both exceptionally lucky, and unlucky. Lucky, in that I started out on such a dynamic work, which teems with emotion. Optimism, Power, Sorrow, Joy, Despair. And everything in between. Unlucky, in that I've spent decades of my life not knowing that this beautiful material was out there.
I am genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this. I picked it out to do fairly late on a Saturday evening, expecting it to be relaxing, not especially intellectually challenging. I wouldn't call it challenging, but somehow, it's bewitched me. Coaxed me into writing a review longer than some essays I've written. It sounds like just an endless spray of words. But it's actually a love letter. A love letter to a genre that I never knew.
Well. That was an experience. It's a difficult one to explain. There's a bit of everything here. Some "normal", some humour, some innuendo. Actually, perhaps a lot of innuendo. In a general sense, I enjoyed listening to this. Some fun tracks to bop along to, and a few laughs along the way. But overall, I'm a fair bit more confused than I was about an hour ago. Many of the tracks were a bit slower, less energetic than I expected. I guess more recent The Who is more my speed.
Rating: A strange one. 3 I guess. I really thought I'd be rating The Who more highly than I have, but I suspect I've run into 2 of their weirder experiences.
Before listening, I was fairly sure that I had heard this album before, front to back. But on reflection, there's some new to me things here. Though it might just have been my goldfish brain doing its thing again.
That said, with the exception of Flick of the Wrist, I liked everything this album had to offer. There's the "big, epic" material they're especially known for, but also some songs that are more finessed than that. Things that are gentle and cute, like She Makes Me. And things that are just the right amount of strange, like In The Lap of the Gods (not revisited). It makes for a fun mix, not too much of any one type of thing. It's less tiring this way.
Rating. If I could, I'd give 4.5 stars. I'm feeling generous, so I'll round it up to five :)
There's not a whole lot of coherence here - the only overarching theme I got was love and relationships, of different stages and flavours. Newly kindled, long distance, fiercely protective, obsessive.
But sometimes, that's ok. And this is one of those times. The tracks are linked by fun use of the synthesisers, something that's right up my alley. Even if it didn't make much sense, it's still ok. Life doesn't really make sense either, so why should the music we listen to? Embrace the weird. Embrace the chaos.
Bjork is weird. But so am I. I think she's my kind of weird. 5
Difficult to find a thread that links this experience. Perhaps there's stress, anxiety, and other mental health concerns? The nature of life in the present day (read 1978, though it still resonates in 2026) causing people to lose what makes them human? Other humans forcing people to give up their sense of identity?
I suspect that this album was meant to make me feel a bit uncomfortable, and to make me question my place in the world - and indeed, the structure of the whole world. And I think it's achieved that goal quite well. It's stressful, but in a thought provoking way.
The album art gives me a laugh, that's a positive.
If they'd elected to use good microphones to record the voice/not mixed the voice fuzzily, I'd be rating this more highly. The weird buzzy, static sound that's in several of the tracks severely detracts from the whole experience.
If I try my absolute best, I can almost look beyond the tinny voices and buzzy guitar which pervades the bulk of the album. But even if I manage that, what's left is what I'll call "white bread" music. It's competent. But it's too simple. It doesn't challenge any expectations. As a listener, it's just not engaging. I know I'm listening at 2230 on a Thursday, but it was putting me to sleep. The music is Ok I guess, but I'm completely puzzled as to how this was inducted to a list of 1000 wonderful albums. Also, why on earth would they remaster it only two years later, and not fix the terrible audio quality of the voice?
To the album's credit, it did pick up a bit in the last quarter. They found microphones which came out this century.
Rating: In terms of music, this is competent, but simple. Briefly, it's boring. There's no interest in it. But we need to take in to account that most of this feels like it has been recorded with museum piece microphones, and then mixed with a persistent buzzing noise. It pushes an experience which I would have described as "low C grade" down dangerously close to F. It's an E grade from me, aka two stars.
Big 80s style synthesizer tunes have long been my bread and butter kind of music. Some part of my mind thinks it's related to the enormous amount of MIDI tracks I found on a hand-me-down computer I received circa 2000. A weird origin story, but that is what it is. Sadly, said MIDI stash is long lost to time, it might have been an interesting/weird little time capsule.
My experiences with the album have been like a roller coaster. Some great fun songs in the first section. An emotional critical hit, directly to my heart in "Little 15". And then the weird section in the tracks after that. Finishing off with more of the synthetic fun that I was expecting coming into this whole ride. Some extremely high highs. At it's worst though, it wasn't bad, but just not my taste.
Rating: I very much enjoyed my time tonight on the whole, even if I did find "Little 15" to be far too relatable in a way I suspect the composers would never have expected.
The music is a bit annoying in certain ways. High pitched noises, one of the vocalists rubs me wrong, and the sheer amount of repetition within the tracks. But there's some good here. The social messaging is important. The underlying beats are generally quite fun and energetic.
I had some fun, picking where the samples were taken from, and some of the base beats are a fun time. But unfortunately, I keep getting pulled out of it by over stimulation and high pitched noises.
Something I've said in a few reviews so far, is that I'm quite fond of saxophone parts in songs. And here we are, an album where the sax takes prime position! And gosh, is it ever wonderful!
There's also some quite recognisable, iconic even, backing tracks here too - I thought that this album may have been their original composition, though a search casts doubt on that.
I can't penalise the album for this, but I do feel that my enjoyment would have been greater could I understand the lyrics, outside of the small amounts of English which the lady is singing.
Right now, I am quite thoroughly relaxed. It being 2245 in the evening contributes to that, sure. But this album is nonetheless extremely soothing, and great for destressing.
Well that was an interesting experience. I think that we learned quite a bit about what makes Buckley tick, especially the things that go on between the sheets. I wouldn't say that I disliked it, but I would say that by the 3rd or 4th song, I was kind of wishing that he'd start singing about something else for a bit. It got a bit repetitive is all. The tunes, guitar, other instruments are all a lot of fun, and had me bopping along at various points. There's several moments of terribly impressive vocal tricks included too. Perhaps the falsetto will grate on some, but I'm pretty tolerant of it.
At risk of irony, the biggest problem with the album was that it kept retreading it's steps too frequently. It kept repeating itself, doing the same thing over and over.
Just want to say, wow, it's crazy cool that this fellow composed some of these pieces in their early teens. I don't even remember what I was doing with my life at that age.
My overall thoughts can be summed up thus: I like it, but I don't love it. It doesn't really fit into either of the two camps which I could see it being placed in. Too active, loud to be purely ambient and relaxing music, that you might play to chill out. Too passive to be the type of bouncy electronic that you might want to get the heart racing. It's still really good, but I feel that it might be improved by trying to focus on of those categories at a time. I don't think that it might come as much of a surprise, dear readers, that the tracks I've given the playlist stars to all fall on the high energy end of the spectrum.
I feel like I should have more to say about 1 hour 15 worth of music. Though I guess all the tracks are instrumentals, and that they're selected works from a greater portfolio, so there is less likely to be some sort of overreaching story here. That said, I enjoyed my listen all the same. An interesting balance between energy and relaxation - though I feel like it may have benefitted from picking one of those two lanes and sticking there.
I feel that the band were trying for something complex here. Some kind of epic story, some sort of big thing, which just didn't come to fruition perfectly. Or more charitably to them, it flew over my head. But in this case, I feel that it doesn't really matter all that much. What's left behind are some fun pieces of music, which strike a delicate balance between energetic/upbeat, and relaxing.
There may have been a rock-opera kind of thing intended here? But the story feels a bit too esoteric to make much sense to me personally. I still enjoyed it, even if I felt like I was missing something.
Being the age that I am, the late 90s and 00s played an extremely important role in shaping the person I am today. Media coming out at this time is no exception. 00s hip-hop, with JayZ and the like being the main force, certainly shaped my thoughts on the genre as a whole. In other words, I very much didn't enjoy it, and this experience poisoned the entire genre for me. While I've come to appreciate some of the positive traits of late 80s/early 90s hip hop, such cannot be said for the 00s. Gone are the positive messages of _A Tribe Called Quest_, and _De La Soul_. Instead, we're glorifying pushing drugs, gloating about how amazing you are, and having enough money to throw at lawyers to beat legal charges. Oh and don't forget the sexism, homophobia, and racism. Gone are the fun, playful beats. Instead, we get aggressive monotony - a single, loud sequence of notes repeated through the bulk of each track's duration.
If I were ten years older, maybe I'd have had a much more positive opinion of this genre. But alas, rubbish like this was my formative experience. 1.
I expected surreal. And that's certainly one word that works well to describe this. But finding more words to describe my time, that's something that I think I might find a difficult task. This album deals mainly in vibes and emotions, not so much stories and words. And I can't write a vibe.
To open, there's absolutely a vibe here, in the first third or so, that gives late 80s/ early 90s educational tv. It's nostalgic. Reminds me of primary school, where my class would wander up to the library, to watch some kind of educational video.
Afterwards, there's several tracks here which I feel tip-toe up to a line. The line being a boundary between childhood innocence, and creepiness - like the kid's laughter is somewhere it most definitely does not belong. I think that it generally stays on the nice side of that line. _The colour of the Fire_ might put a toe on the other side though.
There's a remarkable block of stars running all through the middle third of this album. Five consecutive songs, all going into the playlist. That's impressive. The key to that section is emotion. Instead of just being a collection of cool noises, these tracks make you feel something, while only using minimal words to do it.
Rating: it's gotta be a pretty good number. I certainly enjoyed the bulk of this album from a purely auditory perspective: the trip hop sounds, something which I now understand to be a hybrid of hip hop effects and electronic music, are highly enjoyable. But there's something deeper going on here. There's themes which are explored without so much as a single meaningful sentence. Childhood innocence, new life, the passing of a storm bringing light and rainbows. It goes to the heart.
I really enjoyed this. But strangely, only half of the enjoyment came from the songs. Maybe less than half. I think the lion's share of my fun tonight came from the way this album explores extremely important social issues which result from certain political policies. I think that's more of an indication as to what makes me tick, than any kind of fair review about the music.
But that is not to say that the music is without merit. The complete opposite, in fact. I especially enjoyed the highly synthesised tracks. Mechanical, synthetic music to reflect an increasingly manufactured and soul-less society. Years of austere, conservative policy under Thatcher had London, and indeed the bulk of the UK changing drastically, losing its character. Oops, there I go, getting all socio-political again. Anyway, the music matches the mood of the time excellently, is what I'm trying to say.
Rating: I can't divorce the music from the political/social messaging - they're too intertwined, it's pointless to try. But luckily, I don't need to here. Both are extremely powerful. The songs are fun, energetic times that almost made me want to dance! The themes are deep, and make you think about the state of the world, and how a lot of the issues of the 2020s were rooted in policy choices of the 1980s (and earlier!). Both deserve very high marks. 5 from me, Out of the Blue being the sole blemish on this record.
Coming into this, I wasn't entirely sure what Trip - Hop meant. Some sort of hybrid of electronic and Hip hop, from the tiny bit of reading I did. I'm not really a massive fan of hip hop, so I might have been a little apprehensive. But as it turns out, it's taken the fun sound effect parts, and mixed them into a more conventional electronica experience. And the result is weird. But the good kind of weird.
On the whole, the vibe across many of the songs is quite depressing, despairing, confusing. And it works well with how odd it is to mix two (and in the end, three!) completely different genres. The woman singing has had her world upended on her. Things that made sense, no longer do. Hip hop beats don't go with hip hop voices any more. They go with sad rock ballad voices. Nothing makes sense, but on the meta level, everything makes sense.
Rating: Overall, I think that almost everything about this album was quite a pleasant surprise. With the exception of Numb, any and all of these tracks would very easily find their way into my "keeper" playlist. Very happy with this album. It isn't perfect, but it is worthy of a high number.
She's telling some sort of story here, but a big amount of it is flying over my head. I'd not be shocked if the problem was that I'm too sober to understand it. I won't say that I didn't enjoy this album, but it doesn't fit me very well. It's too out there for me.
The album started out really strongly, with Gloria, but then went down a weird path. Conflicting themes, confusing lyrics, unclear mumbly vocals. And poetry. It was certainly not bad by any means, just very strange.
At the start, I thought this could be anything. But something I didn't expect was lullabies. The middle few tracks kind of blew me away with how slow, melodic, and relaxing they were. The energy picked back up in the latter part, which was nice to see though.
Something that this shares with the other Psychedelic Rock we've had so far is that the lyrics are really quite difficult to grasp the meaning of. Language changes over sixty years, I suppose.
Rating: There's a balance to strike here. Some of these tracks are fun to bop along to, enjoyable. Others are the sap fests that might feel romantic if someone is singing them to you, but otherwise, if tastes and orientations don't line up, are likely to make one's eyes roll, and fall asleep. It's got to go in the 3 star range. A product of the 60s, not so hot in the 20s.
It's gross, but silly. Parts made me awkwardly grin, other parts made me cringe badly.
There's cool beats here, but the words are just a bit too ridiculous. An important thing to remember here is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. In fact, it probably takes itself negative seriously.
I really can't write any more about this. It's such an unserious piece of work, that I can't look at this with any sort of critical lens. Some albums leave me with lingering questions about society, emotions, power. The only question I remember in this whole shemozzle is latex or lingerie?
Heavy themes, ranging all the way between beautiful to abhorrent - they're hard to take. Heavy music - that's a bit easier to wrap my head around. I liked it, but it's something I'd certainly need to be in the mood for. And I think that's a rare mood. But sometimes, it's fun to just blast out, on maximum energy!
Also, more hip hop cross overs than I expected. Well, admittedly, I expected zero hip hop. They absolutely added to the experience though, breaking up the loudness a bit.
The vocals are generally really smooth, not overly quick. It's easy to listen to, almost relaxing. Some of the tracks are even quite funny! There's some important messaging here too, being proud of your heritage is a big theme. It's got all the fun effects that you'd expect, while typically not going over the top with them. It doesn't take itself too seriously - just some guys having a bit of fun.
On the whole, the journey this album takes you on is interesting. It starts out quite strong, went funny in the middle, and weird in the end. Even when it was going full weird, I still liked what I was hearing. I can absolutely see the similarities to 3 feet... - it's similar in all the good ways. There's no De la Orgee moment here, though some tracks are quite absurd all the same.
Big guitar power rock. Some rock ballads too. Some country vibes. Some Punk vibes. A fairytale. A love song to a ghost. And a funeral march. There's truly something here for everyone, it's extremely diverse in what it's trying to do. The sole commonality that holds this whole work together is the guitar work. It's totally wonderful.
Although this album feels like it doesn't really pick a theme and stick to it, I still think it's generally quite well done, even if there's nothing revolutionary here. Also, "oo" doesn't say "er".
Rating: I believe that this album started out a lot more strongly than it ended. If it kept the same energy and power in the second half as it did in the first (up to and including Wish you Well), we might be looking at a high number. But the second half lets things down - it's slow, sad, confusing.
I wish I spoke Portuguese - it would be amazing to know what Bebel is singing about, and to be able to appreciate the music far more. Despite being able to understand very little of this, I feel extremely safe in my judgement that every part of this is "good" at the very least. On top of that, there's some tracks which absolutely stirred _feelings_ inside me - feelings I didn't expect coming into this. I certainly didn't see it coming that an album with so few words I could comprehend would leave me feeling such intense emotion. I honestly think that _Close your Eyes_ single handedly pulled this experience from "good" to "great".
A real yoyo of an album. The mood across the album was shifting more quickly than a pinball stuck up in the bumpers. Several really bouncy fun songs, ones that you might want to dance to, or chant in a group around a campfire. Fun times there. But then that pinball makes a beeline for the outlane, draining the ball, and the mood with a run of depressing songs. There's also some very impressive vocal feats in _Laredo_.
The mood picks back up in the last few songs, which left me feeling happy about my time tonight. Generally, it was a fun, nostalgic time, broken up by some sad country songs.
Young love can lead to intense emotions. Young love lost? That leads to emotions that are ten times stronger. And those emotions shine through here extremely powerfully.
Some absolutely enormous hits here. But also a few kind of unremarkable songs. The tracks which were released as singles, and saw widespread radio play, stand head and shoulders above the rest. It's like there's a few legendary tracks, and the rest is filler? It's not bad, but it's just ok. In a way, I'm also a bit confused by the general direction this was taking. It seemed to oscillate between modern, and 70s. It just made the album hard to follow.
The wonderful songs which made it as singles push this into the 4 star area. But the rest weigh it down, and keep it from rising above that level.
In a nutshell, I'd describe this album as a story of teens falling in love, falling out of love, and figuring out all the emotions which go along with that whole process. I'm not feeling anything really special here. I can absolutely understand differences in taste profiles. But I would say that this offers nothing new, nothing revolutionary. I'm not sure it really belongs on a list of 1000+ albums you must hear.
On the actual music, I would say that I didn't especially enjoy this. The male vocalist's voice sounds extremely unenthusiastic. He sounds like he doesn't want to be here, A feeling which rubs off on the listener. The album as a whole is a snoozefest. Extremely quiet, extremely unambitious. It doesn't seem to have any particuarly deep story. It started out kinda average, and it was all downhill from there.
Rating: I don't like it at all, but it hasn't made my life actively worse. So we're in the 2 star area.
Well. It was interesting. I'm not sure if I'd describe it as good, necessarily. But it sure was interesting. At least, that's what I had in my mind after the first four songs. Following that, I'm not really sure if the tone changed much, but the subject matter certainly did. Topics which I hold dear came up, special interests were piqued.
Another thing I noticed in several tracks was the theme of trying to get back to normal life, after trauma. Soldiers with PTSD, people after messy break ups, dealing with addiction, and even an entire town which has had its heart torn out of it. These are awkward times to live through, and this is supported by the disjointed, almost clunky nature of some parts of the music, at least in these tracks. It's sounds strange, but it helps tell the story.
Unfortunately, twice in a row now for me, I am judging an album where I don't speak the language - meaning I can only really grade based on vibes and the feel of the music.
On the surface, it feels like a really odd juxtaposition: Middle East/North African language, along side a musical style which is so ubiquitously Western. But when you think about it a little more, it represents something special. Humans from all over the world share far more in common than what we have as differences. Some things are universal to humanity - music is one of those things. And musical styles aren't fixed in time or place.
I must admit, I know very little about Arabian, or African music. But I think I noticed something. The songs seem to swing between Arabian and African influence. Between Arabic, and an African language (which I unfortunately can't identify). This chopping and changing reflects the cultural and political conflicts which were and continue to be far too common across the region.
Well, I pretty much got what I expected. A high energy concert, with lots of mega fans in the crowd. Most of the tracks were quite fun, though there were a couple of weaker points in the experience. There was also a fairly consistent undercurrent of weird cutting through several of the tracks - Surrender and Lookout being the two weirdest.
Rating: 4. It's meant to make you want to dance, jump, and shout - a task it does pretty well. But I don't think it'll leave much of a lasting impact. A fun time, but one I'll likely have mostly forgotten by next week.
Trippy synthesizers, and opaque lyrics. That's this experience summed up in one sentence. The shoe gaze style vocals aren't really doing the decipherability of this any favours either. There's large portions of the album that feel more like lullaby compilations than any more conventional kind of music. On a couple occasions, the energy arrives (e.g. the second half of Ten Mile Stereo), but then departs again, as rapidly as it entered.
This was not in the slightest bit what I was expecting. More synth-pop amazingness was not planned. And, for the first third at least, that's what I got. The latter parts of the album, however, are slightly more up and down. The middle third is slower, and more emotional. Indeed, the mood shift is so quick as to induce bewilderment. Things pick back up in the final third, with the energy rising again, culminating in a fun and cheeky comment at the status of the media.
Some of these songs are excellent, some are merely good. One or two just didn't resonate with me. Overall, I liked this one. There's more highs than lows, but enough lows to put it in the 4 star territory.
I doubt I have it in me to write much of a coherent review, without it suddenly pivoting into wild fan-girling, but I'll try my best.
I can absolutely see her voice being a bit polarising. An acquired taste, so to speak. But it is a taste which I have well and truly acquired. Here, we've got ten songs (or technically nine songs, and an intermission track) of pure, unadulterated fun. All sorts of fun.
Synth-pop is undoubtedly one of, if not my absolute most favourite genres of music. And Cyndi Lauper's contributions to the genre are immense. This album gave rise to so many absolutely wonderful tracks, sounds, and musical themes - which are well and truly still shaping music today.
