Title track has a screaming guitar solo to start which was really good but feels perhaps a bit too long overall.
The second gets into some classic 70s funk with a good vibe and feel overall that continue through the shorter tracks.
Super stupid has got a really good groove and more guitar goodness to it
Back in our minds is the weakest song and doesn't have the same energy level as the other shorter tracks.
Overall a decent listen but some detractions in the final track and some of the shorter tracks stop it from being a worldie.
I do feel as though the last track is just a little over the place for my liking. The fart block in the middle was just a bit much.
A really good upbeat, funky soul album.
I listen to this straight through without referencing any of the track names, but I didn't feel as though I needed to. One track just rolled into the next into the next and cut up that grey upbeat, funky rolling bass line with a solid drums.
I wouldn't say that this album did anything extraordinary, but it did the regular things really well. Not an outstanding five-star album but definitely a good four-star.
This is my first introduction to a Kate Bush album.
The first track I already knew from Stranger Things and is a great start to the album, there are parts of the song I wasn't familiar with from the show. The classic larger than an arena drum sound is typical eighties.
The second and title track is still quite strong but feels like it takes most of it's run time trying to get somewhere that it doesn't finish at. No real payoff. Tracks 3 and 4 feel like more of the same. While there is nothing bad about the tracks they just don't hold any interest to make them more than "average"
Cloudbusting is a little bit better, but again spends nearly 3/4 of the song building up for a payoff that doesn't arrive. It doesn't get that kind of feel good vibe, or give me enough angst or a motion that makes me feel like it's a a release track either.
From there it doesn't recover. Waking the Witch started like it was going to be better but got a bit weird in the middle and descended back to background noise. Not bad background noise, just not captivating.
In an interesting twist, Hello Earth sounds more like Running up that Hill reprise, it has some of that same feel in part and is the next strongest track on the record.
Overall, average. 3*
I didn't get much out of this record but YMMV
This Album.
How do you follow up Dark Side of the Moon? Possibly one of the greatest Albums of all time?
You give Gilmour the guitar and start things off by letting him pour out his heart.
The centrepiece of the album Shine on you Crazy Diamond is a masterpiece and whilst I criticised other albums for idly wandering or not getting a song somewhere the slight changes in sections and the nature of the song makes this feel and receive differently. This is progressive rock royalty.
The 3 middle tracks in the Shine-sandwich are all good songs "Welcome to the Machine" and "Wish you were Here" are better than "Have a Cigar" in my opinion but they all have that Pink Floyd flair that you'd come to expect. Welcome has a bit more of a haunting vocal line to it than Wish but I think I prefer Wish overall as a track, why I can't put my foot on. They're both excellent.
Have a Cigar just doesn't have the same feel to the other 2 songs.
You then come to the final few parts of Shine. A fantastic finish to the album and I think it makes the album stronger to have it bookend the album rather than having a massive epic at the start.
Overall a classic album that deserves it's accolades. Not quite Dark Side of the Moon but only 1 record is.
Very good 4.5 Stars which I'll round up ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
First Kinks album, never even heard of the band before.
Ok, the first thing I have to say is the year, 1969. This album is nearly 60 years old and it does feel it.
Starts off strong with Victoria but then it goes down the very British pop/rock scene of the 60s and 70s and I just do not vibe with the vocal style. I don't mind the songs too much but the vocals and the lyrics just don't do it for me. Over the course of the first 4 songs each song got less and less impressive. They didn't feel fresh, they didn't do anything different.
Ok, 5th song in and that's not like it, driving beat, get some brass in there and jazz that mother up!
Australia had some bad bits then some much better bits. They do much better when they stick to the instrumentals. I feel like they would have done well transitioning this record to a mainstream prog rock record and focusing on the instrumental work, but then I have to remember King Crimson did their first record this year too. Same with Shangri-La, and Churchill, better towards the end.
"She bought a hat..." Starts off like a bunch of year 10s singing in assembly once it catches some drive it improves dramatically and the drum solo was great. But then whilst it sounds like it's going for fun, kazoo and all, it doesn't make up for we are 9 songs in and the best one was the first one.
The finish to the record like the songs is better, it starts and finishes well but the middle is about better than what I'd think as alright. Maybe was more pioneering for it's day but to me feels dated.
⭐⭐⭐ (3.5 rounded down)
Best album is so incredibly up and down and so inconsistent. It goes through some engaging kind of wobbly tracks like "Everything in its right place", and then goes into something incredibly underwhelming like "Kid A". And what makes it underwhelming is it just does nothing at all, it has some electronic bubbling that doesn't do anything. There's nothing engaging about it, it just doesn't do anything.
The national anthem is a more interesting track but halfway through it introduces the same kind of baseline interspersed with some saxophones and it just sounds again really out of place. I get that it tries to build up the track and I get it tries to do something extra but it just sounds really off.
How to disappear completely again isn't a bad track, it's got kind of the haunting ish melody that seems to be going through a number of these songs, it's got a little bit more vocal presence. Although I can't say I agree with Tom York's singing style.
Tree fingers was a waste of 3 minutes.
Optimistic was the best track on the record. Easily.
In Limbo was self descriptive
Idioteque I thought was going to be better and then the last 2 minutes felt like filler, it was there because...
The last track happened, that's all I can say about that.
A lot of people seem to have this album in incredibly high regard. I always see it in top albums lists and I've been curious about trying it, but never had. I don't really understand the fuss. This album didn't seem to tell any story or do much of anything. I'm not sure what Radiohead we're trying to do in making this record. If it was experimentalism, then they should have been more experimental. If they were after a more electronic vibe, then go electronic and really go for it. I've heard other songs by Radiohead such as "Paranoid Android" and a few more songs off of "OK Computer" and that feels like a much better feel.
I will not listen to this again.
This is a really interesting album.
The song writing is actually really good. Each of the parts has a place and filled something within the song. What's interesting is that you could hear some of the instruments falling out of time so this actually helps the album feels more raw and almost spur of the moment. Perhaps it was the nature of the recordings from the 60s.
There are 2 longer songs in the album and "It was a pleasure then" is the first of them. It's a bit more out-there compared to the more regular first 4 songs, I guess this is the Art-Rock inclusion. It wasn't terrible but it did feel odd compared to the rest of the album, by then it did shake it up making the more "regular" outings more agreeable rather than samey.
I have to say the flute playing is refreshing and is actually quite good even though the phrases are pretty basic at times. I think that putting this all together it could have been a landmark at the time but these days it's a nice general folk album.
Overall, a pretty good album. Is it enough for a 4*? Toughie that... I think not. It's not bad, don't get me wrong but did I think it would go in my library? No.
⭐ I can't help myself
👍 Everything else
👎 Hokoyo / Mud in your eye / Breakfast Time
🗑️ Tenterhooks
Would give 3.5 as being alright but just not to my taste. Gonna round this one up
I have heard this before. My dad would play this album when I was a kid and something's have stuck, the trumpet solo in "Chan Chan" is one of them. The opening is strong and has that classic Latin/South American feel and sound. At the time I was a kid there wasn't anything else like this that I could listen to and I think this helped it stick to me why millions of others as one of the best selling "world music" albums.
I feel like this album is perhaps a bit too long. I listened to the 2021 Remaster on Apple Music and didn't listen to any of the bonus tracks but it was still maybe 3-4 tracks to long.
There is variety of the tracks but I'm not so much of a fan of the slower more piano focused tracks, "Pueblo Nuevo" and "Orgullecida"
Track wise:
⭐ All of the first 3 tracks / Dos gardenias
👍 The rest
👎 Pueblo Nuevo / Orgullecida / Murmullo
🗑️ None
Some very good songs on here which are pretty down much more by the ones which aren't as good. Where done albums feel dated, this doesn't feel quite as stuck in the 60s though definitely has some of the hallmarks of it's time.
I think this album probably was quite influential at the time of release and has definitely been called back to. Albums like "Red Harvest" directly link to things that The Doors did with this album.
👍 Break on Through, Light my Fire, The End
👎Alabama Song, End of the Night
This album reviewed itself on "Pearl's Cafe" - "It's all a load of Bollocks"
The "singing" is rubbish. I can't tell if it's intentionally that way or this album is a parody of something and it's designed to be bad.
At times the music is better - "Sock It to 'Em J.B" had some good brass and bass work but oh dear god someone tell the vocalists to leave... Shouting out names of Bond titles is meh at the best.
Whoever decided this should be on the 1001 to listen before you die was probably giving a clue to someone he wanted to buy it.
To quote track 9: "I can't stand it"
"International Jet Set" is perhaps the best song on the album. The reprise at the end is a waste of time and recording space.
1.5 stars... Gonna round this one down
I had never heard of this artist or album before and was excited to try something different compared to what the 1001 Album Generator had given me previously.
What a massive disappointment. The songs are boring, there is nothing there to capture your attention and hold you to the music. The quality of the recording is fine but oh my goodness is the actual content a snore-fest.
The tracks are substance-less. The lyrics feel like they're being read out by a primary school student with an unseen script in front of them. Other people praise the lyrical content and the style, but it just does not work for me.
Some of the instrumental work is ok, but it is repetitive and lacks imagination.
It is a shame that I couldn't even finish the album, but there are other things which are more musically involved, vocally engaging and ultimately enjoyable that makes me think that wasting time here is pointless.
Not heard this or the band before so another new one ticked off.
The first track builds up brilliantly and crescendos all through, a very good song to start off with!
Second track isn't quite as good but is pretty decent in that indie rock type of way that the lyrics are decent but the vocal melody is more like being talked at. This indie rock flavour continues through a lot of the album. Good solid drums, nice melodies for the backing instruments and a decent number of various instruments but the vocals let the side down.
Crown of Love is a centrepiece and has a great tempo change towards the end which breathes new life into the song and the feeling of the album for a bit. Wake up was equally good.
This is a perfectly good album, with some good, if not very good songs but none are quite enough to make it onto my favourites list let alone my 5*s.
3.5 stars for perfectly good... Gonna round this one down.
👍 N1 (Tunnels), N3 (Power Out), Crown of Love
👎 N4 (Kettles), Haiti
Very forgettable
This failed to leave any kind of impression on me.
The tracks were extremely skippable.
The guitar solos lacked any kind of awe factor.
This feels like an album trapped in a very particular genre and what it is it certainly isn't hard rock or alt rock as suggested above.
The vocals are that typical country drawl that either indicates to me someone can't sing but should replace it with some kind of lyrical immersion, some storytelling, something.
The Long songs are too long and the short songs fail to capture interest.
Farmer John may just be the worst song I've every heard.
Just Meh. So meh.
Good, but not as great as it's title track
Aqualung is a really well renowned album but perhaps the song is more famous.
I know the song but didn't know the rest of the album.
I really like how the flute comes through and the bass in the mix is really present and helps give the songs more depth.
The album in general has its own sound that it definitely goes for, it doesn't go far out from there. You kind of intersperse the singing elements with more kind of spoken pieces which does seem to work with this music.
There are definitely some better tracks. The title track is the standout. "My God" in the middle as well is pretty good and warranted a favourite.
Other than that, the album is much of a muchness, it has its niche, it has its sound and it's a good album. But you'd think if you only knew the title track that the album would have been much better than it actually was.
Three and a half stars which we will round up to 4. It's pretty good but it isn't very good. And the lack of continually great songs is the flaw there.
Never listened to this before.
The overture does it's job very well. There are definitely some tracks that should have just been incorporated into others. "It's a boy" was just a waste. The ending to "Christmas" is a bit weird.
"1921" is where the album really kicks off and it's ok, it's standard 60s rock.
The drumming in "Amazing Journey" is really good and the rest of the band members are just left in the dust. This is a common theme throughout some of the rest of the record.
I can definitely hear some future influences. "Sparks" sounds very like some that I've heard on Testimony by Neal Morse, same with "Underture".
It took me a while to shift to realising that the lyrical content is what I need to focus on and the music is the lesser part in telling the story through most of the tracks. You do have the occasional contradiction to that. Pinball Wizard is the standout track and from there the singing improves as well but the guitars are quite stuck in 'bash out the chord'
I listened to it through and it was alright
No strong feels on this - ⭐⭐⭐
Not heard this before or heard of the band.
1st track was ok but ended somewhat abruptly (a common theme through a number of songs). With some rock/country feeling bass is going off on this and is decently present in the mix. The bass really takes centre stage on the 3rd track and seems to be the highlight for the album for me, with more occurrences on "What gets Heard"
The second has a great upbeat feeling and motors along well even if it does stick within it's comfort zone. This carries through the album, once the song has found a groove it doesn't really escape it. Some songs never really get going...Vastapol sounded like it was going to be great but then didn't go anywhere.
Can't think of many albums that's have a Drum Solo track in it. It's not bad but a bit lacking in dynamic bit of an odd choice IMO.
I listened to the rest and other than "Some Things" nothing stood out. Another of those "why is it on there records"
⭐⭐
