Elton sounds great. I'm not really a fan, but the guy's got this great, raw voice capable of some pretty impressive raving. But there are also songs which miss the mark considerably with a head scratching disconnect between vocals and lyrics, such as the very weak Levon, which is home to some of the worst and least compelling storytelling I’ve ever heard. But even vocals can't save that stupid song when he is a Native Ameri an sang as a white, British guy.
The main problem I have with Buckley jr is that he thought perfection meant drawn out high pitched squeals every single time and for me it comes up short and becomes extremely repetitive.
Grace is a vey ordinary album. it's not good and never threatens to be good (not on an overall, consistent basis). Noticeably the three poorest numbers are written solely by Buckley and I think that is the most damning indictment.
Its syrupy and mellowdramatic and prtentious, over-the-top and very unadventurous for me. The meandering elastic voice of Buckley after two listens works on my nerves and the music sounds like just about any band could've produced it. Predictable and outdated stuff.
Elevator music from hell played for a fancy trust fund kid riding to a VIP rooftop club in New York City
I hear a certain annoying hipster smugness and irony (post-/pre-.) Murphy vocals sounds like low budget David Bowie impersonation on some tracks and sort of squawks on others
Perhaps flat is the best way to describe this. Flat may be a perfectly respectable aesthetic position, except that here it just repeats as lethargy, occasionally enlivened by the sound of seagulls screeching at one another over the remains of a fast food carton - I mean vocals
"What do you call five fingers grasping a small boy's penis? The Jackson Five." - Neil Hambuger
The Beasties are just awesome. An incredibly cool sound with the real instruments coming into such chaotic hut super solid and tons of fun album, but after Eguene Lament's it begins to drag more and more - and I love their instrumntals. But who cares, Beasties were "effortlessly" cool even when they rhymed 'bout religious awakening.
For every Elvis song there's a black artist that's done it better, and seeing as how most of his best songs are actually covers it pretty much cements him not as a great songwriter or musician, far from it actually. He's a great performer.
But not here. this was way, way worse than I expected. I love bits and pieces of Elvis, he is The King, after all, but this is cloying, limp and underwhelming and, frankly, behind on the times. It feels dated by 10-20 years, beign relased in 1969. I regularly see the world's #1 Bangladeshi Elvis impersonator, Sal, and he is way better than this album.
There's a plasticity and an insincerity to Elvis here that prevents a lot of the material from landing. He goes for a plastic soul sound that has neither the ferocity of early sexy Elvis or the bombast and the silliness of fat weird vegas Elvis. I would rather listen to black soul and r&b singers that have done it first and done it better.
It's no wonder the music industry left him behind for Beatlemania, but it's weird that this acted as a catalyst for him to make a comeback.
Despite my huge respect for Mr. Byrne & Mr. Eno, I have never managed to warm to this album. It touches all the ethnomusicology bases that usually gets me on, but it is far too derivative of Can & the solo work of Holger Czukay and just feels like an impersonal curio for Westerners.
I feel bad for not liking this cause I appretiate the ambition and the record is very... sincere in its pretentiousness? But I am not exactly a fan of the vocals that seem to be trying too hard to please my ear. A little too indie for me, I guess. And unless you're in love with the vocals, you probably won't enjoy this album too much as the background instruments are absolutely nothing special on their own.
This is an addictive and extremely groovy jazz-rap record. But for me, the grooves and flows are the biggest selling point here with not much else for me to fall in love with. Don't get me wrong this is great music, but way too monotonous for me to form a deeper connection with.
With that being said, I still enjoy this music, respect it for what it is and also recognize it's influence. I just wish that I enjoyed old school rap more, this album deserves praise but I just find it hard to find things here that really blow my mind. Obviously the rapping is really impressive but as an album listening experience, I'm not that on board
Besides, lyrics didn't click with me at all, they felt a bit cringy and nonsensical to me, personally, to me.
These songs are earnest, even painfully earnest, mish-mash of musical genres and broader ideas watered down to achingly boring diversions, I can't help but feel a little underwhelmed with the fact that so many songs in this are so... whatever. It's clumsy and weird and usually i find such records kinda fun, for the sake of adventurous escapades by the creators, but this just bore me with its bare-bones soundboard for 0.50c spare ideas
...If you had to pick Beatles or Stones, fuck'em both I choose Ramones...
Its like the guys wanted to show they can play like whities, and they can. And its awful. Black American answer Jon Bon Jovi. Disingenuous empty noise
Closer is better. This one is not as dark or as intimate as Closer would be. It's dark, yes, but only in the way that most post-punk is on the darker side of things in the first place. In other words I have a more difficult time fully enveloping myself in the music here than I do with its successor, for whatever reason. Also, last track is the longest and unfortunately the weakest. Still, this is still an absolutely essential album, and if you're missing it, you really have a lot to account for.
i think both debut and Master of Reality are much more accomplished and distinct, but this is still obviously a solid set of songs. While The Who were maximum R&B , Black Sabbath were heavy, down tempo take on black American guitar music and in this category I am Blue Cheer fanboy.
'Iron Man' is goofy and overrated and overplayed, 'Rat Salad' is a snoozer of a instrumental track, and 'Planet Caravan' crawls along to nowhere. I will say that the first ten minutes or so are definitely good. 'Paranoid' is a great garage-y sounding standalone track that doesn't really need any further extrapolation, BUT you owe it to Sabbath to give them a listen.
There are days when Fela was the best in the world ever.
I don't want to whitesplain this, so jus' listen to this, it"s about that throwing stones at monsters is a good and worthwhile practice.
Do I really want to hear 45 minutes of Parliament songs hacked to bits and Dr. Dre rapping about his dick beign stuck in '92? No. By the way, Dre should not be in top-ten rapper list unless it's a list of rappers born in 1965 from Compton named Andre. Then he's probably near the top of that list.
Is this is one of the only albums that could get away with being this damn misogynistic, violent, and lyrically repetitive and still be seen as nothing short of classic? Maybe, but for me only because it introduced us to Snoop.
I am not a fan of the late 90s, early 2000s R&B infused pop sound. That made it so that this album had an uphill battle from the start. It did not succeed in overcoming these prior biases, but it was inoffensive, at least. I agreed with most of the messages presented on the album, but found them getting repetitive over its nearly hour-and-a-half runtime, and the sound itself changed very little as well. There were more hits here than expected, but I still fail to remember them despite their popularity, and the whole thing is just of its time. It isn't bad, but every passing day makes this age worse, not due to its message, but rather the aesthetic behind it. Just a bleh feeling, it's hard to put into words, but it is easy to recognize when you go through it all.
„Since the Velvet Underground appeared in the late ’60s, the most inventive rock music had become increasingly minimal and messy. Popular rock, though, like jazz and classical before it, was settling into genre, replete with strictly defined earmarks, so anything that went in new directions was considered „fringe.” Soon you had dying industrial town misfits like the Stooges, MC5, and the Electric Eels recording raw rants about suburban dullsville, fascism, race riots, and hopped-up and horny runaways to an audience of few; while Jethro Tull, Yes, Pink Floyd, etc. were readying the mass music-buying hordes for eleven-minute suites about gnomes. Now really, which one sounds more intriguing?„ Eric Davidson, The Gunk Punk Undergut, 1988-2001
White Stripes want to be the first sound, xeroxing all music ideas from Mick Collins, but paradoxically are the second, playing for acclaim and taking credit for someone else work. Bedsides, Jack White is an asshole.
Fuck this band.
It's very unlikely that the world of music is ever going to see another personality like Big Sol. Someone larger than life who was a licensed mortician, infamous popcorn dealer, unshakable soul singer, ever-ready business strategist, KKK survivor, wonder-boy preacher and a man who never lost his cool when James Brown tried to literally "steal" his King of Rock 'N Soul crown.
That beign said, like many albums from this era there is one major flaw to this one and that is that a large majority of artists, Solomon included, were singles artists which means there are some great tracks on here and a bunch that sound very similar to those great tracks and few covers, all sang by a guy with an incredible voice (and even with that voice: yuck any time when he sings bour the "little girls"). Picking out the few interesting and highly successful singles is enough for me and for everyone, I guess.
I came to Oracular Spectacular completely in the dark and when I left I made sure to leave the light on as a reminder to never open this door again. It's musical eqivalent of watching clothes spinning in public washing machine. Bunch of sound mindgames, symbols, pretensiousness, and references that are used only to supply a sense of cool rather then to represent the meaning they used to have. Its an endless tub of pop - so maybe it's a band for our times, fuck I know. Its a butter smeared on toilet seat, Blink182 of "indie electro pop" or whatever the fuck this empty shell of music is called.
"Respect" probably is the greatest album-opener in the history of popular music (hiperbole but why the fuck not, she took man's desperate plea into a female empowerment anthem). Alas, similiarly to other soul artists, the industry then had "singles first" attitude and the rest of the album, despite her spellbinding singing is mostly sldrowned in souly lovelorn hysteria, usual ballroom-dance routine and easy soul drama, The musicians are mere a canvas for her voice hut that voice, this shit has different calibre. So most tracks are shmaltzy but her voice elevates them for me.
She has the most beautiful scream in music - not Munchy, but one of affirmation. But the almost constant eposure of intensity can be tiring, becomes a limitation, and it had a dreadful influence on all the white rock singers who thought all they had to do to create emotion was scream - we see you Robert Plant - but that, I suppose, is not Franklin's fault and she has much control over her abilities. Myself was always a Billie's boy but cant feel a respect and awe for Mrs Franklin
Despite the occasional spark of inventive soundscaping, this record has far too much in common with the rest of the pantheon of ‘electronic’ musicians (Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, etc.). So much time is dedicated to the same ugly synthesised strings and two note keyboard sounds, and this particular reliance is significantly grating after about fifteen minutes - never mind forty! As a performer, he comes over like a pretentious Bowie wannabe, Eno with hair, who wants to be Ballard, and I'm not sure I could listen to another album of his reedy, robotic vocals, they are the most off-putting thing here,. its thin, whiny tone may be a match for the notes which come from his synth. Whie it lacks vibrancy and sparkle, in its own idiosyncratic way, this album certainly seemed to strike a chord in the doomy landscape of Britain getting used to the austerity of Thatcher's government (Numan was reportedly a big fan, kudos to you Gary)
I am Monk fanboy but let's try to be honest, I really like how the album's tracks manage to be complex without sacrificing their playfulness. I do like every track on the album, but I don't absolutely adore any of them. I just feel that quite a few of them overstay their welcome a bit, starting to grow slightly stale towards the end. My problems arise with what they could’ve done more of: there could’ve been MORE structural variation and MORE variation between tempos, specifically. While each song sounds and feels slightly different, a wider array of sonic ideas would’ve made this an even MORE engaging listen. While the pieces are high quality, the ideas seem to run a bit stale.
